World Superbike fans may, or may not, be pleased to hear that beIN Sports will continue televising WSBK for the American market, through the 2015 season.
As was the case previously, beIN Sports will continue as the sole-television provider for the American and Canadian television markets, while the beIN Sports online streaming service will operate alongside World Superbike’s own internet property.
Like its liter-bike compatriot, the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R gets a special 30th Anniversary livery upgrade for 2015. Like the 2015 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R, the changes to the ZX-6R are only skin deep, and meant to celebrate the Ninja’s 30 years of being on the market. Accordingly, the 30th Anniversary changes include the following for the Kawasaki ZX-6R:
That special 30th anniversary exclusivity will cost you an extra $300 over the regular model, and if you want Kawasaki’s anti-locking brakes system (ABS), be prepared to shell out another $1,000 for it.
I had to check the date on when we last talked about BMW and TVS partnering up to build small-displacement motorcycles together, and it looks like it was almost exactly a year ago. In that timeframe, the two companies have been quietly working, but rumors have started to heat-up as to when we could see a sub-500cc BMW motorcycle.
A cynic’s response might be that BMW doesn’t want to be perceived as late to the small-displacement party, especially since its sub-500cc machines won’t be ready until Q3/Q4 of 2015.
With Honda, Kawasaki, and KTM already debuting their 250cc & 300cc models, and Yamaha & Triumph set to debut 250cc machines shortly, it seems the only manufacturer without a small-displacement offering either available or in the works is Ducati.
There aren’t too many product lines in the motorcycle industry that can claim a thirty-year heritage, and with the whimper of marketing coming from Kawasaki, you would hardly know that the Ninja has been on the scene for three decades now.
To fix that problem, the 2015 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R has been released early to help Team Green celebrate the Ninja’s birthday. However, don’t get your hopes too high, the changes for 2015 are only skin-deep, and are comprised of the following:
The Marc VDS Racing team is considering moving up to MotoGP for the 2015 season. Team manager Michael Bartholémy has started the process which could lead to a MotoGP entry for next season.
A switch to MotoGP is far from being a foregone conclusion, Bartholémy was keen to emphasize. “This is the first step in a long, political process,” he said. The first stage would consist of talks with Marc van der Straten, the Belgian brewing magnate who owns the eponymous team, here at Jerez, then again two weeks later at Le Mans.
After we spotted the name “Africa Twin” in the USPTO online filings, buzz about a proper adventure-touring model from Honda have been swirling the internet, and even in print. German magazine Motorrad adds to the rumor mill, saying that the recently released privateer racer-only Honda CRF450 Rally will serve as the basis for the ADV model.
Italian online site Moto.it confirms that the Africa Twin will be visually similar to the CRF450 Rally, and goes on to say that the new model will likely not debut in 2014, but instead Spring 2015.
According to Moto.it, the Honda Africa Twin will have a strong off-road bias as an adventure model (a 21″ spoked wheel up front), be roughly 440 lbs at the curb, and have a displacement between 900cc and 1,000cc.
Big changes look to be coming to MotoGP’s spec-tire system. Now in the sixth season of having a single official supplier, MotoGP is moving closer to seeing the number and variety of tires drastically expanded. With the contract with Bridgestone due to expire at the end of 2014, there is even a serious chance that a new manufacturer could take over from the Japanese tire firm.
A report in the latest issue of the Spanish magazine Motociclismo (available via the Zinio platform), the magazine is reporting that Dorna is looking to change the way that the single tire supply works. Dorna representative Javier Alonso told Motociclismo that negotiations had been opened with several suppliers, including Michelin, Pirelli and Dunlop, as well as current supplier Bridgestone.
Dorna had presented Bridgestone with a list of conditions drawn up by the Safety Commission, the liaison body in which the riders discuss safety issues with representatives of Dorna, hosted by safety officer Loris Capirossi.
Though Alonso does not explicitly name the conditions, he does give Motociclismo some context behind their thinking. The idea is to expand the range of tires available at each race, as it has been all too common in recent history for riders to turn up at a particular track only to find that just one of the two compounds available will work.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that with the debut of the Ducati Monster 1200, that another liquid-cooled Monster was around the corner, to fill in the middleweight segment. With Ducati already having the 821cc Testastretta 11° engine in the Hypermotard line, that engine will get double-duty with the 2015 Ducati Monster 800.
Spotted by the BikeSocial website run by Bennetts, an insurance company in the UK, we get our first glimpse of the Monster 800 in the wild. Visually the 821cc machine is almost identical to its 1,200cc counterpart, but the new Monster clearly has a double-sided swingarm holding onto its rear tire.
I was just in the BRD Motorcycles office the other day, and managed to get a glimpse of a near-production version of the startup’s RedShift supermoto/motocross platform. A more refined version of the prototype I rode in December 2011, though fundamentally and visually a very similar machine, we here at Asphalt & Rubber are eagerly awaiting the release of these lites-class bikes.
Unfortunately for my brief tour, the BRD team took away my phone, and gave me only vague responses to my questions about the RedShift in exchange. I can’t fault them on either account — the San Franciscan company doesn’t mess about with the “spy photo” nonsense, and would rather comment on realities, rather than push marketing hype.
CEO Marc Fenigstein did say that the company would have some announcements very soon though, which I would presume to be about additional company funding, which in turn leads to more concrete delivery dates of production bikes. Of course, time will tell on that.
However, one of those announcements might have been leaked out in one of the company’s job postings though: a cheap, powerful, affordable electric scooter for 2015.
With electric motorcycles seemingly popping up everywhere, it comes as a surprise to no one that the Italians would eventually want a piece of this pie.
Originally the Energica Ego was scheduled to be released in 2014 but, as we have seen with many electric motorcycle companies that decide to venture into uncharted territory, innovation comes at a cost.
According to the Energica, the Ego produces nearly 135 hp and 143 lb-ft of torque with a top speed of 149 mph. Range is said to be 93 miles on a single-charge, and the starting price will be $25,000. This puts the Energica Ego out ahead of the competition but, numbers on paper are just that, numbers on paper.
Seeing a Daytona-inspired 250cc sport bike concept at the 2013 EICMA show, it hasn’t been a considerable amount of time since we last heard about Triumph’s plans to bring a quarter-liter motorcycle to market.
Set to be built at the company’s production facilities in India, the Triumph Daytona 250 (as it’s being called) will help bring the British brand to the hot markets of India and Southeast Asia.
Caught testing via a series of “spy photos” by Motorrad in Germany, we can see that Triumph hasn’t strayed far from its render preview, which itself didn’t stray far from the Daytona 675.