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For 2012, Segway returns as the title sponsor for MotoCzysz’s electric motorcycle racing program, with the team’s first race set to be the TT Zero event at the Isle of Man TT. Continuing the special sauce that lead MotoCzysz to a 1-2 victory at the Isle, Segway Racing hopes to be the first and fastest team to crack the 100 mph average lap speed barrier for electrics on the Mountain Course.

Rumored to be bringing another all-new 2012 MotoCzysz E1pc to the iconic road race, MotoCzysz’s biggest competition will come from a now more-developed Lightning “Flying Banana” and wild card Honda Mugen Shinden. Further entrant announcements are still expected as well.

UPDATE: Added more information & technical specifications from Mugen’s press release.

This morning we learned that John McGuinness will be Mugen’s rider in the team’s bid to break the 100 mph barrier at the 2012 TT Zero. Heavily speculated to be a stealth project by Honda (?? / Mugen was started by Hirotoshi Honda, the son to Honda founder Soichiro Honda), much speculation has been done over what sort of bike Mugen would be bringing to the Isle of Man TT, and now we have that answer.

Called Shinden (??), meaning “God of Electricity” in Japanese, the machine may not have the same exquisite lines of the Honda RC-E electric superbike concept, but upon closer inspection, Mugen’s electric race bike seems like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Breaking cover at a press conference in Suzuka, the Mugen Shinden features a brushless three-phase 90 kW (120hp) DC motor, carbon fiber swingarm, and a carbon fiber twin-spar frame design.

When it was announced that Mugen would be racing at the Isle of Man TT in the TT Zero event, a bevy of speculation began to hit the newswires. Of course, the biggest topic of conversation was that Mugen’s entry was really a front for Honda to race its electric bike unofficially against the privateer efforts of teams like Lightning, Mission Motors, and MotoCzysz.

With the entire electric motorcycle racing community believing there to be a connection between Mugen’s entry and Honda’s recently debuted RC-E electric race bike concept, it seemed that an established motorcycle OEM would finally have some sort of presence in electric motorcycle racing this year.

Of course if Honda is involved with the TT Zero race, then surely the company would tap its main man, seventeen-time Isle of Man TT race winner and King of the Mountain, John McGuinness. McGuinness hasn’t been shy about his desire to get on an electric bike after watching MotoCzysz’s Michael Rutter and Mark Miller narrowly miss the 100 mph average speed mark at last year’s TT.

Confirming his entry in the TT Zero race during a video shot in what looks to be the Morecambe FC locker room (yeah, we have no idea), McGuinness also lets it slip that he will be in Japan next week testing the Mugen/Honda electric bike — boom goes the dynamite. Video is after the jump, skip to the nine minute mark.

When it comes to motorcycles that pitch more tents than a Boy Scout Jamboree, the Honda CBR1000RR probably isn’t at the top of your list. That’s not a slight to the venerable CBR, but Honda has always been more of a “function over form” type of brand. That being said, I never thought I would see that when Honda would give up its technological dominance in production sport bikes, but for 2012 the Honda CBR1000RR will have to fight the battle of being low-tech offering in war where electronics are the new horsepower.

While the 2012 Honda CBR1000RR is likely not to come out the victor in sport bike sales figures this year, the Japanese company has a very good chance of dominating at the Isle of Man TT in a few months. Of course it helps when you have “King of the Mountain” John McGuinness at the helm of your TT bike, but we’ve got hand it to the Japanese brand, as the TT Legends scheme that McGuinness and Simon Andrews will race at the IOMTT and Northwest 200 makes us forget all about the fact that the Fireblade comes sans an sort of electrical aids. Get your computer desktop ready, jumbo resolution photos await you after the jump.

John McGuinness may be recognized as the King of the Mountain, as the Englishman has 17 Isle of Man TT victories to his name (second only in overall TT victories to the legendary Joey Dunlop). But, the young Ian Hutchinson has accomplished something neither McGuinness nor Dunlop can lay claim to: winning five solo-race victories in the TT fortnight. Hutchinson did the impossible in 2010, winning five of the solo-class races in dominate fashion (Hutchy could have swept all six solo races if he rode an electric).

Tipped as the favorite for the 2011 Isle of Man TT, Hutchy suffered a shattered leg while short-circuit racing in the British Superbike Championship. Missing last year’s TT, IOMTT fans have been waiting for Hutchinson’s return to the famous island event this year. However with only four months until the 2012 Isle of Man TT, Hutchinson has again broken his leg while rehearsing for the Carole Nash MCN Motorcycle show on an off-road bike.

Isle of Man TT star Keith Amor announced today that he will be retiring from motorcycle road racing, after learning that his shoulder would required more surgery. The 39-year-old Scotsman first injured his shoulder at the 2011 Isle of Man TT, where he crashed at both Quarterbridge during practice and at Union Mills during the controversial second Supersport TT, which was started under very wet conditions.

Injuring his shoulder further during the 2011 Ulster GP and unable to full heal, Amor made the following succinct statement on Twitter, “Unfortunately after visiting my surgeon yesterday my worst fears came true, I need more surgery so I have decided to retire from racing.”

Put together by the TAS Relentless Suzuki squad, this short video about the Isle of Man TT is already getting me pumped up for next year’s races. Beautiful Manx scenery, the clever wit of Guy Martin, and of course true road-racing footage is a trifecta for anything good in the world. I could wax poetic a bit more, but then that would keep you from watching the video after the jump.

Getting word from our sources close to the Isle of Man TT, the TT Zero race will make its third consecutive appearance on the TT schedule despite the fact that the event is still mysteriously absent from the 2012 IOMTT preliminary schedule (as noted by the astute Mark Gardiner). With a £10,000 check still up for grabs to the first electric-powered sportbike to crack a 100 mph average lap speed, plans for the 2012 TT Zero are apparently still being put together by TT officials, and will be announced once they have been finalized.

Rewind back to the 2011 Isle of Man TT and the Monster Energy Supersport 2 race, where a very soggy set of TT riders nearly mutinied against Race Direction for wanting to start the race under torrential conditions. With only the fastest of the riders making it onto their second lap, better discretion prevailed as the red flags came out and called the race cancelled due to weather (aiding that decision was the retirement of Gary Johnson and injury-free crash by Keith Amor).

With the top riders collected at Ballacraine, there were more than a few live cameras on the gathered motorcycles, which brings us to this video of Guy Martin, John McGuinness, Cameron Donald, Bruce Anstey, Michael Dunlop, Dan Kneen, and Chris Kinley of Manx Radio discussing the day’s ride. Trading stories on how racer nearly killed themselves on the past lap and a quarter, what surprise sus in this video isn’t the content, but instead the carefree attitude each rider has towards how close they came to meeting their maker. A funny breed these TT racers are (don’t even get us started about the Dunlop brothers).

One distinction that got overlooked from this year’s Isle of Man TT is the fact that MotoCzysz currently holds the top seven fastest laps ever put down by an electric vehicle around the TT’s Mountain Course. What makes this feat perhaps more noteworthy is that two of those laps have been captured in a single video, due in part by MotoCzysz’s two-bike strategy this year at the TT Zero. With American Mark Miller on the 2010 MotoCzysz E1pc and Michael Rutter on the 2011 MotoCzysz E1pc, the two competitors lapped a thinking man’s race down the course, with each rider trying to conserve power, and get into position for a final-stretch breakaway

Pulling around and ahead of his teammate down the final stretches of the course, Rutter was disappointingly just shy of the 100 mph mark, leaving the Isle of Man’s bounty on the average lap speed to stand until next year. Still, the pair both set the fastest times ever in the TT Zero, and improved on the pace from last year. MotoCzysz has now been kind enough to share their lap records with us in a video that shows not only the race telemetry (Contour cameras for the win!), but also has Mark Miller and Michael Rutter commentating. Watch the 23 minute video of Rutter’s and Miller’s race over on MotoCzysz.com.

Source: MotoCzysz

The second running of the TT Zero at the Isle of Man TT, made for the Isle’s third electric racing occasion on the Manx island. With 2011 being the 100th year of the Isle of Man TT running over the fabled Mountain Course, all eyes were focused to see if the fitting 100 mph barrier would drop as the electrics made their race today. Heavily favored were the bikes from the Segway MotoCzysz Racing team, which brought a modified version of its 2010 MotoCzysz E1pc that was being raced again by last year’s winner Mark Miller, as well as the company’s new 2011 MotoCzysz E1pc that Michael Rutter would swing a leg over. Also on the Isle was MotoCzysz rival Lightning Motorcycles, an entry from Japan, and a bevy of strong university teams.