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MotoGP: It’s Not Over Until It’s Over at Sachsenring

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With the rainy weekend turning to cloudy but dry skies, racing for the German GP proved to be a challenge as teams had only one practice session plus the warm-up to get their dry-setups right for the afternoon’s race. With Casey Stoner sitting on the pole-position, all eyes were on the Australian to see if he could convert the front-row start into a points advantage in the MotoGP Championship, after Lorenzo’s crash in Assen leveled the points between the two rivals.

The level playing field was courtesy of one over-zealous Alvaro Bautista, whose first-turn crash at Assen took the factory Yamaha rider down with him, thus negating his 25 point lead in the 2012 MotoGP Championship. With much of silly season still undecided, the focus wasn’t just on the riders at the front, as Ben Spies, Andrea Dovizioso, and Cal Crutchlow all are vying for the last factory seat in the Yamaha garage. As the German GP would prove, even with half of the season nearly over, it could all come down to the last minute. Click on for a full race report with spoilers.

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Saturday Summary at Sachsenring: Why the Ducatis Aren’t Fast in the Wet & Why Germany Could Be Happy on Sunday

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It poured at the Sachsenring on Saturday afternoon. It absolutely hosed down, rivulets of water running across the track to make the conditions treacherous. Ideal conditions for Ducati, you would say, given their form so far this year in the wet, with Valentino Rossi on the podium in the downpour at Le Mans, and a 1-2 during the first session of free practice at a drenched Silverstone. But Nicky Hayden is 7th and Valentino Rossi 9th, a second or more off the pace of pole-sitter Casey Stoner. What went wrong?

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MotoGP: Rain Provides Exciting Qualifying at Sachsenring

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With a mixture of wet and dry conditions occurring during the race-week for MotoGP at Sachsenring, qualifying for the German GP was a strictly rainy affair. The great equalizer, the rain proved to throw a wrench in the usual procession of riders, as MotoGP gets ready for its second round of three back-to-back race-weekends.

Adding drama to the event was the deadlock in the 2012 MotoGP Championship between Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner, as Alvaro Bautista took out the Spaniard in the first corner of the Dutch TT. For his crimes against Spanish supremacy, Bautista will start from the back of the grid, regardless of his qualifying effort today.

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Thursday Summary at Sachsenring: Of Rider Changes, Rossi, Pedrosa, & Crutchlow

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Silly Season has hit full swing in Germany, not just for the MotoGP class but for the support classes as well. And while movements in MotoGP are mainly about what is happening next year, in Moto2 and Moto3 – and even among the CRT machines – there is some serious rider swapping going on for the rest of this season.

In MotoGP, the next two key movements just got a lot closer. Dani Pedrosa is now very close to staying with the Repsol Honda team, telling Spanish journalists that he would sign a new two-year contract with HRC either here in the Sachsenring or at Mugello at the latest. His priority had been to stay on a bike he felt he could win with, telling the Spanish newspaper ABC earlier this week that Honda and Yamaha had been his only realistic options. The Ducati, he said rather pointedly, was more something a rider might consider before their retirement.

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MotoGP: Battaini Will Replace Karel Abraham at German GP

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Ducati test rider Franco Battaini has been tapped to take the place of Cardion AB Ducati’s Karel Abraham, who injured his hand during at crash at the Catalunya test. Sitting out the British GP and Dutch TT, Abraham will also be unfit to ride at Sachsenring, thus causing his team to have to find a replacement rider.

This last news is just one of many blows to Abraham’s season, as the 2012 MotoGP Championship has been a rough one for the young Czech rider, who with a bevy of crashes, has only finished in the points once.

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Video: Horex VR6 Gets Up and Running

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After seeing the production schedule of the Horex VR6 pushed back several times now (let’s not even mention the DOA-status of the supercharged version of the bike), it looks like the revival of the German brand is nearly ready for primetime, as Horex has released a video of the VR6 scooting about (sans its triple-pipe exhaust). The aptly named Horex VR6 features a 15° VR-shaped six-cylinder motor, which with its 1,218cc displacement produces a stout 161 bhp.

Built with classic roadster styling, Horex has been tight-lipped on the bike’s pricing, though we expect that it will be well north of $20,000 when it reaches American shores. While we’ve already heard the supercharged Horex testing on the company’s engine dyno, this is the first we’re heard from the naturally aspirated model. Check it out after the jump, and let us know if you think it was worth the wait.

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Video: Watch the Fastest Motorcycle Lap Around The ‘Ring

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We probably would have posted this video out of sheer Star Wars geekdom, but a 7min 10sec lap around the Nürburgring Nordschleife (BTG) is also nothing to scuff at as well. Such is the accomplishment of Andy Carlile, a 33-year-old Englishman living in Germany who was on a mission to be the fastest on two-wheels around the ‘Ring.

Setting the record on street-legal Dunlop rubber, perhaps the only thing more impressive than Carlile’s lap time is his feat of keeping the squirrely but otherwise mostly stock and street-legal 2005 Yamaha YZF-R1 at bay, as the video shows the massive movement of the bike on braking and acceleration. Jedi mind trick for sure.

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Horex VR6 Roadster to Begin Production

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In the past when a new motorcycle entry has come to market, we are bombarded with a bevy of media releases about the company’s two-wheeled offering. Usually this also means that Twitter gets lit up like a Roman candle, and Facebook turns into a digital burlesque show where each piece of the bike is slowly revealed and teased in front of us. Such is not the case with Horex however, as the revived German motorcycle brand is being very…well, German about its VR6 roadster.

Set to being production on the non-supercharged Horex VR6 in the coming weeks, the jewel of the German company, its six-cylinder narrow-angled VR motor, will be built in Augsburg, Germany. Initially making only a few bikes a day, Horex’s assembly line will feature the “one man, one bike” approach, where a single-worker will work on the same motorcycle throughout the company’s four-stage build process (read: more Ferdinand Porsche, less Henry Ford). Each bike built by Horex is made to order, though we are not sure how any pre-orders have been made with the company, let alone what the price tag could look like.

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The Anatomy Behind BMW Motorrad’s Sales Dominion

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We already told you that 2011 was BMW Motorrad’s best sales year ever, and that the BMW S1000RR topped the Bavarian brand’s charts here in the United States. Zie Germans must be feeling rather pleases with themselves right now (and rightfully so), as BMW has released more details about its all-time motorcycle sales record. Pushing out 104,286 units in 2011, BMW Motorrad was up 6.4% in 2011 over 2010, with each of the 2011’s twelve months outselling its 2010 counterpart. Toppling its previous sales record from 2007 (the height of the world economy), it says something about BMW’s current business strategy that it can best that figure in an economy that is still exceedingly weak in comparison.

It is interesting to note in which markets, and in which segments, BMW is finding this growth, because the answers are not necessarily our usual suspects. Basically doubling its worldwide 500+cc market share over the past four years, BMW now accounts for 12% of the worlds “big” displacement motorcycles by units sold per annum. This goes counter to the trend that we’ve seen, where small-displacement are being cast as the sales leaders for large brands (namely the Japanese Four).

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Video: 7min 50sec Around The Nürburgring on a Kawasaki

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One of the relatively newer trends in automobile promotion is the timed-lap video footage around the Nordschleife of the Nürburgring. With Porsche, Ferrari, Chevrolet, et al battling for four-wheeled supremacy on one of the most famous road courses in Germany, the Lexus LFA currently stands as the quickest of the productions cars with its 7min 14sec lap time. While the motorcycle industry has been relatively mum to respond to such feats, some intrepid souls have taken arms up for the cause.

In what we’re sure will re-ignite the ongoing car vs. bike debate, Bridgestone test rider Tim Röthig set out with a 2011 Kawasaki ZX-10R, a set of of Battalax R10 race tires, and a handful of blitzkrieg riding moves to race against the clock on the German course. With an entirely respectable 7min 50sec lap time, Röthig lapped the 12.8 mile track just over half a minute off the carbon-chassised LFA’s time. Though perhaps not the King of the Nordschleife, with that run Röthig still manages to embarrass a number of drool-worthy cars we’d like to have in our fantasy garage.

Considering the Lexus LFA carries with it a $375,000 price tag and a 500 unit production run, we think the $13,799 Kawasaki ZX-10R is still a pretty good bargain, though riding at the pace Röthig goes makes a feel a bit squeamish while watching the video. Check it out after the jump.

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