Episode 84 of the Brap Talk motorcycle podcast is out with another “weekly” episode, for your two-wheeled listening pleasure.
It is a new year, but your same favorite motorcycle podcast! This show sees us announcing a few new bikes in the garage, some bigger than others.
Mugen is set to go racing with its electric dirt bike in the new FIM E-Xplorer World Cup series.
Racing under the M-TEC name in the new series, Mugen is perhaps an electric racing outfit that we had almost forgotten about, as the Japanese tuning house hasn’t been on the track with its Shinden electric superbike since 2019, when the Isle of Man TT canceled its electric race.
While the various iterations of the Mugen Shinden electric superbike have captured the headlines with their non-stop race wins at the TT, it was the company’s intriguing dirt bike concept that stunned on its debut.
Team presentations tend to be rather turgid affairs. Hours of talk for a few brief moments of enlightenment. Which is why we sit through all those hours of talk, of course, because if you listen carefully and read between the lines, you might learn a thing or two.
Past experience left the MotoGP media looking at the Honda motorsport Q&A with some trepidation. Would it be worth sitting through the long presentations to dig out nuggets of interest?
That calculation changed on Thursday night, when HRC announced that Marc Marquez had been riding a motorcycle again, and would be present at the launch on Friday.
Sam Sunderland can call himself a two-time Dakar Rally winner after today’s final stage of the iconic race.
The Brit finished third in Friday’s Stage 12 timed section, which was enough to clear him by almost four-minutes from his next competitor, Pablo Quintanilla.
The day marks a bit of history as well, as Sunderland’s result gives GasGas its first Dakar Rally, though the machine is largely a rebadged KTM 450 Rally motorcycle. For those who are unaware, GasGas became part of KTM’s business group in 2019.
There has been a huge step forward in Marc Marquez’ recovery from diplopia, the double vision he suffered as a result of a crash riding enduro.
After consulting with the doctor treating his eye condition, the Repsol Honda rider was given the go ahead to ride a motorcycle again.
The house of brands under KTM’s management had a very, very good year in 2021, with their parent company Pierer Mobility reporting a 23% increase in motorcycle sales over 2020’s dismal figures.
The preliminary report doesn’t break-out sales by each motorcycle brand (KTM, Husqvarna, & GasGas), but it does separate out the firm’s bicycle and e-bike figures, which have been used in the past to buoy the marketing team’s efforts.
As such, we can rest assured that today’s announcement and positive progress is real, and not the spin we were getting in 2020, which saw the Austrian outfit taking a first-time dip in sales results in the past decade.
Ducati is the first OEM to brag about its 2021 sales results, and it is quite the brag from the Italian brand – with 59,447 units sold last year.
That sum is an all-time record for Ducati Motor Holding, and marks a 12% gain over the total sales from 2019, and a 24% gain over 2020’s results.
Helping take Ducati to that level was double-digit growth in all of the motorcycle-maker’s key markets, including the United States, where sales were up a staggering 33.5%.
That growth was surely fueled by the Ducati Multistrada V4 adventure bike, which accounted for nearly 1 in 5 Ducati’s sold in 2021.
Episode 258 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one sees us looking back on the career of The Doctor, Valentino Rossi.
On the mics, we have Steve English, David Emmett, Neil Morrison, and Adam Wheeler, and they are joined by esteemed MotoGP journalist Mat Oxley, who has just completed a book that chronicles the career of Rossi.
It is the second week of January, and there as yet no substantial rumors of MotoGP rider contracts being signed.
Compared to recent years, that is a bit of a late start to Silly Season, given that all but a handful of riders have their contracts up for renewal at the end of 2022.
Perhaps the best news from Alpinestars at CES is that the Italian brand is going to make its off-road airbag system available to consumers, later this year.
The news comes as part of Alpinestars’ larger airbag product line announcement, but we figured this news was so important, it deserved its own story.
This is because the Tech-Air OFF-ROAD V2 protection jacket is the first commercially available airbag system designed for off-road motorcyclists, and that makes it a game-changer for those who want the best protection in the dirt.
Debuting its next generation of airbag safety equipment at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Alpinestars Tech-Air airbag product line is getting a substantial updated for 2022.
All-in-all, the release sees the debut of three all-new system: Tech-Air 10 race track system, Tech-Air 3 over/under vest, and Tech-Air OFF-ROAD V2 protection jacket.