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With seven races left in the 2022 MotoGP season, we are approaching the final stretch. There are 175 points left to play for, and Fabio Quartararo has a lead of 32 points over Aleix Espargaro.

That means that Espargaro still has his fate in his own hands: he can become 2022 MotoGP champion by the simple expedient of winning every MotoGP race left, and if Quartararo finishes second in all seven races, the Aprilia rider would take his first championship by a slim margin of 3 points.

Ducati is the first OEM to brag about its 2021 sales results, and it is quite the brag from the Italian brand – with 59,447 units sold last year.

That sum is an all-time record for Ducati Motor Holding, and marks a 12% gain over the total sales from 2019, and a 24% gain over 2020’s results.

Helping take Ducati to that level was double-digit growth in all of the motorcycle-maker’s key markets, including the United States, where sales were up a staggering 33.5%.

That growth was surely fueled by the Ducati Multistrada V4 adventure bike, which accounted for nearly 1 in 5 Ducati’s sold in 2021.

A bit of a Christmas surprise landed in our inbox today, as the Ducati MotoE project is further along than expected, with their “V21L” prototype bike caught making laps at the Misano World Circuit.

The bike is the first iteration of what will be raced in the MotoE World Cup, starting in the 2023 season.

And while Ducati just announced its intent to takeover that series a few months ago, the Italian brand is clearly far from the beginning stages of that project.

I had originally intended to follow-up my preview for the 2021 EICMA trade show in Milan with daily round-ups, but after witnessing what was produced in the first two days, that clearly was unnecessary.

There were question marks on what the 2021 show would be like, after last year's cancellation and with the specter of COVID-19 still hovering over Europe and the motorcycle industry as a whole.

We have that answer now, and it is not a good one.

In the 13 years that I have covered the largest motorcycle industry trade show in the world, I can tell you definitively that this year's EICMA was by far the most disappointing.

EICMA, as we know it, is dead.

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When I first met the Aprilia Tuareg 660, it didn’t make much of an impression. It was the 2019 EICMA show, and the bike was quietly on display in a glass box, covered with plants and vines.

The display was so nondescript, that thousands of attendees and hundreds of journalists passed by the Tuareg 660 without even noticing that it was there.

Nothing is subtle about the Tuareg 660 now though, as the middleweight adventure bike is riding the wave of success that has come with Aprilia’s previous two models from its 660cc platform.

Add into that notion how popular the middleweight ADV space has become recently, and we can begin to see why the Aprilia Tuareg 660 is one of the most anticipated motorcycles for the 2022 model year.

So to test its mettle, Aprilia brought us to the Italian island of Sardinia, where the winding mountain roads make for challenging and technical riding on the street.

And to get our feet dirty too, we tackled some rough gravel roads/trails, as well as an off-road circuit that Aprilia created with a good mix of sandy, rocky, wet, and bumpy conditions.

Is the Aprilia Tuareg 660 any good? Ask 31 riders and you will get a Baskin Robins of answers back in this highly personal two-wheeled space.

But, the Aprilia Tuareg 660 does seem to inhabit the Goldilocks zone of the middleweight ADV space that should impress many, and leave quite a few riders reaching for their wallets. Let me explain.

Episode 248 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one is our Moto2 and Moto3 follow-up to Episode 247, which focused on the MotoGP action from the Emilia-Romagna GP at the Misano World Circuit.

On the mics, we have Steve EnglishNeil Morrison, and David Emmett, as they walk us through the on-track action in the support classes.

Episode 247 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this show covers the MotoGP action from the Emilia-Romagna GP at the Misano World Circuit in Italy.

On the mics, we have Steve EnglishDavid Emmett, and Neil Morrison, as they cover less of what transpired on the track, and more about Fabio Quartararo’s first MotoGP World Championship.

For the motorcycle industry, 2021 is turning into a banner year, as motorcycle sales are booming across all segments. So, it shouldn’t surprise us too much to hear of record sales and standout quarters from motorcycle sales reports.

Here’s an interesting one for you though: Ducati sold more motorcycles in the first nine months of 2021 than it did in all of 2020 (which was 48,042 units).

Now granted, 2020 was an abysmal year for selling motorcycles, but even compared to 2019’s figures, the Italian brand is firing on all of its desmodromic valves.

It has been something of an irrelevant day at Misano. On Friday morning, the track was soaking, rain keeping it wet. In the afternoon, it started off wet, but a dry line started to form.

“At the end, the last 10 minutes to go, we had one dry line, but lap by lap it was getting wider,” was how Takaaki Nakagami described it.

With damp conditions expected on Saturday, and a cold and dry Sunday, nothing of importance was learned on Friday.

It was a wasted day in terms of finding race setup, perhaps, but it was still useful in overall terms. MotoGP is full of young riders who haven’t had all that much time in the wet, and so Friday offered a chance to gain some valuable experience.