Cal Crutchlow is hot on heals though and is less than a tenth of a second behind.
Ducati and Andrea Dovizioso are trying the “wings” again.
Aleix Espargaro has been fast despite losing 14 km/h to Marc Marquez through the speed trap.
The Class of 2015.
Steady start for the 2014 Moto3 world champion Alex Marquez on his Moto2 debut.
Andrea Dovizioso could be a good outside bet for a podium this weekend.
Indian Motorcycle has filed a recall with NHTSA that affects 806 units of the company’s 2015 Indian Scout motorcycle.
The recall is due to the Scout having a fault with the rear brake’s master cylinder, which can have a decrease in braking performance, or a complete loss of braking power.
A late announcement to the Suzuki motorcycle lineup, the 2015 Suzuki GSX-R1000 comes with the banner headline of adding anti-locking brake system (ABS) and a bold new “Suzuki Racing Blue” graphics package (BNG) to the venerable superbike.
The added safety of ABS is at least a welcomed change to the now seven-year-old model version of the Suzuki GSX-R1000. Meanwhile, the graphics package is designed to make a link between the GSX-R1000 and Suzuki’s MotoGP race bike, the Suzuki GSX-RR — even though the street bike pre-dates its racing counterpart all the way back to when Suzuki was last entered in the premier class.
It would be easy to dismiss the Yamaha TMAX as just another scooter being added to Yamaha USA’s 2015 lineup, but the two-wheeler is all the rage in Europe and Japan, where it serves the interests of young speed fiends and hardcore customizers alike.
Hoping to use that popularity to bring new riders into the Yamaha brand, Yamaha Motor is bringing the venerable TMAX to US soil for the first time…and we’re actually pretty excited about that (not that Yamaha will ever let A&R critique a bike at a press launch).
Within a day of the announcement that the British round of MotoGP would not be held at Donington Park comes confirmation that the race will be held at Silverstone.
The ending of the relationship between Donington and the Circuit of Wales meant that a replacement venue had to be found at short notice, and with only Silverstone currently capable of hosting a MotoGP round, the deal was quickly arranged.
HRC unveiled its factory MotoGP team this weekend in Bali, Indonesia — giving us our first glimpse of the Repsol Honda livery for the 2015 season.
Both Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa were in attendance, which is no surprise considering how important the Indonesian market is for Honda.
The Indonesian unveil also helps the two GP riders to have only a short hop now to Malaysia, to start the MotoGP season with the first official test a Sepang International Circuit.
As for the 2015-spec RC213V, things remain mostly the same to the layman’s eye. Red Bull’s sponsoring and support of both Pedrosa and Marquez, as well as the Repsol Honda team, is more prominent, and displayed on the belly pan fairing of the bike.
We’ll let you play spot the differences in the photos after the jump, they are super-sized high-resolution shots, so they might take a minute to load. Enjoy!
A bit of a formality, since rider John McGuinness already spilled the beans in December last year, but Team Mugen has confirmed its entry into the 2015 Isle of Man TT.
Mugen will have a new bike at the contest, named the Shinden Yon, “Yon” being “four” in Japanese, and the bike being the company’s fourth TT racer — like its lap times, Mugen’s engineers are very consitent with their naming conventions.
Little is known about the Shinden Yon, and Mugen is saying only that the machine is “newly developed to improve over last year’s model.”
Yamaha is ready to go racing in the 2015 MotoGP World Championship, and the Japanese OEM debuted today its factory team and racing livery. Of course riding for Yamaha Racing are Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi, and their weapon of choice will be the Yamaha YZR-M1 GP race bike.
2015 does not see too much changing in the MotoGP rulebook, so the 2015 Yamaha YZR-M1 is fairly close in spec to the 2014 model, though you can be certain that Yamaha and its team of engineers have not been wasting the off-season time with idle hands.
This season sees Abarth, the tuning brand of Fiat, as an official sponsor of the Yamaha MotoGP team, re-igniting the two company’s previous collaboration when both Rossi and Edwards worked for the Iwata-based manufacturer.
We won’t bore you with anymore details, we know you came for the high-resolution photos. You’ll find plenty of them, in all their bandwidth-busting glory, after the jump.
MV Agusta USA has released the pricing info for its 2015 model year motorcycles, after the Italian company had re-evaluated its pricing strategy in the USA. Accordingly, MV Agusta has gotten very aggressive with its US pricing, with several models seeing a modest price decrease, or ABS added for free.
The biggest price drop is the MV Agusta Rivale, which has been made more affordable and to give room for the touring-oriented MV Agusta Stradale. The MV Agusta Turismo Veloce has been added to the 2015 model year list, as expected.
But, perhaps most surprising is the announcement of the MV Agusta F4 RC — a motorcycle that was leaked ahead of the EICMA show, but was not shown at the Italian motorcycle fair. No details on the machine exist on MV Agusta’s public or press sites, but we can expect a 200+hp superbike that’s ready for racing homologation.
Good news for American road racing fans, as MotoAmerica has announced its TV and online streaming agreement for the 2015 season and onward.
The multi-year agreement sees all MotoAmerica races being televised on the CBS Sports Network, during the weekend afternoons and in primetime.
Event highlights, features, and other content will be featured on Torque TV, which will serve as a central online destination for American motorcycle racing enthusiasts.