The FIM has announced the provisional WorldSBK calendar for the 2019 season. The calendar as it stands has 13 rounds, 12 of which have been confirmed. Brno and Laguna Seca are out, while Jerez makes a comeback, with a midsummer round still to be announced. That round could be Kyalami.
As we expected, the GRT Yamaha squad is moving out of the World Supersport Championship, and into the World Superbike Championship for the 2019 season.
Riding for the GRT Yamaha squad is not who we expected however, though it will be two big names in the sport: former world champions Marco Melandri and Sandro Cortese.
Melandri makes the defection from Ducati, where he was reportedly paying for his ride, to Yamaha. He hopes to best his fifth place in the 2018 championship standings. Meanwhile, Cortese comes into the World Superbike racing having just won the World Supersport Championship title.
Factory-backed in World Supersport last year, the GRT Yamaha team will keeps its factory status next year as well, which leaves Yamaha with four factory-backed YZF-R1 racing machines on the grid in 2019.
In case you missed the launch of the Ducati Panigale V4 R superbike, the 998cc fire-breathing 217hp (162 kW) beast of a motorcycle, Ducati Corse is dead serious about returning to winning form in production superbike racing. In other words, the Bologna brand is all-in when it comes to WorldSBK next year.
Helping them to that object is the Ducati Panigale V4 RS19, a bike that is available only to the racing customers of Ducati Corse.
Dripping in carbon fiber, this track-only weapon is what Chaz Davies and Alvaro Bautista will use next season, as they aim to unseat Jonathan Rea and Kawasaki from their superbike dominance.
We are big fans of what boutique Italian brand Fantic Motorcycles is doing with its 450cc lineup. To our eye, the Fantic Callabero 500 is modern vintage done right. It almost makes us wish we lived in Europe, so we could go ride the big thumper in anger.
New for this year’s EICMA show is another 450cc bike from the brand, the Fantic Caballero Rally 500. It isn’t an earth-shattering design, and it obviously borrows very heavily from the Fantic Caballero 500 scrambler, but we still enjoy it.
As we predicted, the 2019 BMW F850GS Adventure made its debut at the EICMA show in Milan, giving the German brand another adventure bike in its arsenal on the segment. Obviously based upon the BMW F850GS that we saw debut last year, the F850GS Adventure takes the middleweight’s off-road capability to a higher level.
At the core of the machine is the same 853cc parallel-twin engine that is in the F850GS model, which means a 94hp (75 kW) peak power figure, along with 68 lbs•ft (92 Nm) of torque. It also means a 538 lbs (244 kg) wet weight at the curb, which is absurdly heavy, if we do say so.
Of course, some of that bloat comes from the 6.07-gallon (23 liters) fuel tank that has been added to the mix, which BMW Motorrad says is good for 340 miles (550 km) of riding, which is no joke. So, there are trade-offs to be made there.
Feature-wise, there is also a larger touring windscreen, which is taller and wider. BMW has also included adjustable shifter and brake levers, for better ergonomic adjustment.
While it’s not the completely new superbike that was rumored extensively this year (see you in 2020?), updates have come to the 2019 Honda CBR1000RR, which make smart changes to the Japanese superbike.
The EICMA show waits for no motorcyclist, and we love us some superbikes, so let’s just get right down to it.
I had to go back and lookup when we first saw the Svartpilen 701 from Husqvarna, because even though it was only a year ago…that time seems like an eternity.
Maybe it is because of Husqvarna’s measured pace with its street bikes, maybe it is the design overlap between the 401 and 701 models, or maybe it is because we have wanted to see what this retro-modern flat tracker was going to look like after the lawyers had their way with it.
The answer is probably all of the above, but it doesn’t really matter. The 2019 Husqvarna Svartpilen 701 is ready for your two-wheeled consumption.
We have long been wondering when the KTM 690 Enduro R would get an update, especially after seeing the Husqvarna 701 Enduro get the revised big thumper from the KTM 690 Duke street bike.
That wait is over for the 2019 model year, as the KTM 690 Enduro R gets a bevy of revisions.
A new motor, a new chassis, better suspension, and a slew of electronics, the 2019 KTM 690 Enduro R is better in practically every single way, which should ensure that this popular dual-sport continues to be at the top of the big-bore heap.
After a year of waiting, we finally see the production version of the 2019 KTM 790 Adventure and the 2019 KTM 790 Adventure R motorcycles. Two flavors of ADV bike, the 790 Adventure series is KTM’s way of owning the dual-sport space.
In addition to the revised KTM 690 Enduro R for the 2019 model year, KTM has created a path from 250cc to 1301cc for adventure and dual-sport riders, with the KTM 790 Adventure being a critical bike in that lineup.
Much has been said about this machine already, so here are the basics to cutdown on the chatter: 94hp (70 kW), 65 lbs•ft (88 Nm) of torque, 5.3 gallons (20 liters) of fuel, 448 lbs wet with fuel.
Another model that we expected to see debut at the 2018 EICMA show, the Kawasaki Z400 is a logical evolution of the small-displacement lineup that Team Green is creating.
Built in conjunction with the Kawasaki Ninja 400 sport bike, the Z400 is the naked option for the street for new riders, short riders, and riders that want to do more with less.
This means that the 2019 Kawasaki Z400 has a 399cc parallel-twin engine, that produces 45hp (33.4 kW), which is a 6hp increase over the 300cc model that it replaces.
Even as the official opening of EICMA rapidly approaches, our Bothan Spies are hard at work looking for clues to next year’s motorcycle debuts. As such, they bring news from Milan, where BMW Motorrad is set to unveil a bevy of new motorcycles.
Most of these new bikes we know of, with the BMW R1250GS Adventure and BMW S1000RR already leaking, and the BMW R1250R and BMW R1250RS obviously tipped by CARB filings for the new ShiftCam boxer-twin engine.
With BMW Motorrad telling us that we will see nine new motorcycles this new bike season, all that is left is simple math on what remains, now that the BMW R1250GS and BMW R1250RT debuted ahead of the INTERMOT show.
So far, our total is six…but we’re about to make it seven, as our Bothan’s report that the BMW F850GS Adventure will debut tomorrow morning in Milan.