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Kenny Roberts

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Last month I was fortunate enough to stop by the ranch of one Kenny Roberts Sr., and got to look at the Grandfather to American Roadracing’s personal motorcycle collection. Comprised of nearly a dozen KR Proton MotoGP machines, amongst the nearly forty bikes in the collection, King Kenny easily has the quintessential motorcycle dream garage — and I haven’t even gotten to mentioning the stacks of race leathers, helmets, trophies, and other racing memorabilia that line the walls and cover the tables in the small two-wheeled gallery.

Making some space in his collection, Kenny Roberts Sr. has put four race bikes from the Team KR racing heritage up on the auction block, two of which are KR Proton GP machines. The first bike up for grabs is a KR Proton KR3 (above) that was ridden by Nobuatsu Aoki, which raced in the 2001 500GP Championship and features a two-stroke V3 motor. Also offering a MotoGP-era four-stroke machine, King Kenny has added his KR Proton KRV5 XM2 (below), which was ridden by his youngest son, Kurtis Roberts, in the 2004 MotoGP Championship, and features a proprietary five-cylinder motor.

It’s been a good year for Yamaha Motors in racing, with riders James Stewart, Valentino Rossi, and Ben Spies all taking championship titles home for the tuning-fork brand. As a holiday gift to race enthusisats, Yamaha has put together a quick documentary on another rider that took the checkered flag home for Yamaha…in 1975. At the Indy GP this year, Kenny Roberts re-lived his 1975 flat track victory on the 125bhp, 750cc two-stroke Yamaha TZ750 flat-tracker of death. Video after the jump.

It looks like Kenny Roberts will be returning to premiere motorcycle racing, this time in the upcoming Moto2 series. The new Moto2 series is almost a replay of Roberts’ earlier endevours into MotoGP, a honda motor and a custom chassis.ÊRoberts bowed out of MotoGP in 2007 after money dried up for his Proton backed team, and they were not able to remain competitive.

However, with the expected lower costs of running in the Moto2 series, Roberts may have found the perfect fit for his tight budget, and custom chassis making experience. Also, with Robert’s team already in place loosely, working on a 600cc track bike, the conversion over to the Moto2 should be fairly painless.