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Gone Racing: The Kramer HKR Evo2 S

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For those that haven’t been keeping track on Asphalt & Rubber, the Brap Talk podcast, and on social media, we are spending more than a little bit of time at the track this year, racing with the Oregon Motorcycle Road Racing Association (OMRRA) to chronicle what it means to become an amateur racer.

I have already outlined my reasons for wanting to go racing, but I wanted to spend the next two article mentioning what I am racing with, both in terms of machinery and gear. First up is an introduction to our racing platform, which for this season is a Kramer HRK Evo2 S.

We have already talked about Kramer’s ready-to-race single-cylinder motorcycles, and in fact our race bike for this series is the same bike featured in that article’s story.

Previously a demo bike for Kramer in the Pacific Northwest, this “S” model machine found its home in my garage, and as you can see from the photo above, it has been on quite the journey since.

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Bikes

Suzuki SV650 Rally Concept by Oberdan Bezzi

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What can one say about the Suzuki SV650 motorcycle? The bike is in its 20th year of production, and though the model has changed a little by little over time, the same basic formula has stayed the same.

Here, we have a special idea from Oberdan Bezzi, who takes the venerable SV650 and turns it into large-format off-roader.

Dubbed the Suzuki SV650 Rally, the concept looks quite convincing, and it plays into the strategy that Suzuki seems to be building off of.

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News

Triumph and Bajaj’s Love Affair Begins to Take Shape

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I had to dive back into the A&R archive to find out that Triumph and Bajaj first announced their intent to partner on middleweight motorcycles almost exactly two years ago.

Details were light at the time of the announcement, and few specifics have surfaced since…until today…sort of. This is because news out of India tells us that Triumph and Bajaj are aiming to have a formal agreement signed in Q3 of this year.

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News

Piaggio Group Reports Unit Sales Up 5.9% So Far This Year

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While the rest of the industry walks on pins and needles, the Piaggio Group is celebrating a strong first-half to the 2019 sales year, with overall unit sales up 9.2%.

That number isn’t just all Vespa scooters though (however, the Italian brand does sell quite a few of those), as Piaggio reports that its motorcycle sales saw a 14% bump in gross revenue.

The Italian conglomerate pegs the new Moto Guzzi V85 TT for the sales boom over last year, which is quite a feat since 2018 was a strong year for the Piaggio Group as well.

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News

MIC Begins to Form Long-Term Plan to Attract New Riders

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The motorcycle industry in the United States needs to attract new riders. This is a well-established fact, and we have already begun to see manufacturers catching on to this idea – most notably, Harley-Davidson with its “More Roads” business plan.

Now, the Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC) is rallying the troops to the cause, announcing a new long-term initiative to bring in new riders.

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Bikes

Up-Close with the Yamaha YZF-R1 Suzuka 8-Hours Race Bike

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For a brief moment, the Yamaha Factory Racing Team was a five-time winner (in a row, I might add) at the Suzuka 8-Hours endurance race.

That reality was eventually snatched away by the FIM Endurance World Championship race direction officials, who this weekend learned something new about their rulebook, but the race run by the factory-backed Yamaha team was no less impressive.

For nearly eight hours, the team’s three riders (Alex Lowes, Michael van der Mark, and Katsuyuki Nakasuga) kept in check the best efforts by the Kawasaki Racing Team and Red Bull Honda squads, and it wasn’t until the final stint that Alex Lowes lost track of a raging Jonathan Rea.

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Rumors

Ducati Multistrada V4 Test Mule Spied in Italy

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We know that Ducati plans on bringing its Desmosedici Stradale V4 engine to segments outside of the superbike realm, but only those segments where the high-power, high-revving engine makes sense in that application (and where the cost associated with the machine justifies the pricy engine’s use).

So, it doesn’t surprise us then that the first model to get the V4 treatment is a new Streetfighter from Ducati, the prototype of which was used for that fateful campaign up the Pikes Peak mountain.

Rumors have been rife though that Ducati would put its V4 engine into the Multistrada lineup as well, and today we get our first real proof of that notion, with the Ducati Multistrada V4 test mule caught on the road in Italy, both in photo and video.

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Racing

FIM Changes Suzuka 8-Hours Result, Declares Kawasaki the Winner

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As expected, the result of the 2019 Suzuka 8-Hours was decided well after the podium ceremony for the Yamaha Factory Racing Team, with the factory Kawasaki team protesting Race Direction’s interpretation of the rulebook.

Agreeing with the Kawasaki Racing Team’s reading, the FIM concluded that because the race ended on a red flag, the results should be counted from the first full lap before the incident, which had KRT leading by a comfortable margin. 

This overrules Race Direction’s opinion that KRT failed to return to the pits five minutes after the race ended, which saw the Kawasaki team declared a non-finisher, and thus off the podium box.

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Racing

Motorcycles Will Not Race Next Year at Pikes Peak

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The future of motorcycles competing at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb continues to be a precarious situation after this year’s death of Carlin Dunne.

As such, the Board of Directors for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb recently convened and decided that for next year’s event, no motorcycle racing will take place as part of the hill climb.

In a press release, the race organization says that it needs to “gather data and analytics to review more thoroughly the impact on the overall event in the absence of this program.”

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