On a day when Nicky Hayden wasn’t far from anyone’s mind, the WorldSBK paddock paid tribute to The Kentucky Kid. With a minute’s silence, tribute videos, and the Stars and Stripes fluttering in the breeze as fans lined Donington Park, it was the racing that truly honored Hayden.
For many in the motorcycle industry, 2016 felt like an off year, and now we know that those feelings weren’t unsubstantiated.
Early leaks of the MIC’s industry sales figures for 2016 show that the US motorcycle market contracted 2.1% in 2016, erasing the modest gains made in 2015.
Meanwhile for our neighbors across the pond, things are going substantially better, with sales in the United Kingdom up 11.7% (128,644 registrations).
The first week of 2017 has come and gone, and we are a week closer to the MotoGP bikes hitting the track again at Sepang for the first test of the year.
Though little of consequence is happening publicly in the midst of the winter break, there are the first few signs of activity.
So, after the jump is a round-up of the news from last week: most of the things that matter, all in one place.
Reading motorsports websites all over Europe recently, you would think it was Doomsday for motorcycle racing, and all forms of motorized sports.
Even in as august a publication as The Times (of London, that is), the headlines warned of impending disaster:. “EU insurance rule ‘will destroy British motor sport’“. Is the end nigh for motorsport in Britain?
The short answer is “No, but it’s complicated”. So where did these warnings that the sky is falling come from?
On Wednesday, the MCIA (the Motorcycle Industry Association, the body representing the British bike industry), the ACU, and the AMCA (both representing motorcycle racing, on road and off road) issued a joint press release, warning that motorsport in the UK could come to an end due to a ruling by the European Court in Luxembourg.
The ruling stems from a judgment in the case of Vnuk v. Triglav, case C-162/13 before the European Court of Justice, and known as the Vnuk judgment. The case involved a Slovenian farm worker, Damijan Vnuk, who was injured when he was knocked off a ladder by a tractor reversing with a trailer.
Vnuk was working on a farm at the time, and sued for compensation from the motor vehicle insurance policy of the tractor. The lower Slovenian courts rejected his claims, but the Slovenian Supreme Court referred the case to the ECJ.
Coverage of Brexit, the United Kingdom’s referendum whether to continue as a member of the European Union, has largely been ignored in the United States, and it certainly hasn’t been a blip on the radar recently within our microcosm of the motorcycle industry.
But of course, the United Kingdom’s place in the European Union will have far-reaching consequences, even in our beloved little two-wheeled world.
If you check the timestamp on the most recent Paddock Pass Podcast posting, you will see that I was up late enough into the evening to get word that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union, with the “Leave” supporters edging out the “Remains” by the narrow margin of 1.3 million votes.
There is a lot of politics at play here, and I don’t care to rehash it, other than to say that it could be a foreshadow of what could come soon in the United States as well. What I do have to say though is an examination of how the United Kingdom leaving the European Union can and will affect the world of motorcycling.
It seems Guy Martin won’t be a BBC Top Gear host after all, according to Britain’s Commercial Motor magazine, as the mechanic from Lincolnshire has seemingly turned down the job offer to be one of the hosts of the infamous British show.
Though a disappointment, Martin has seemingly reached this decision because the rigors of hosting Top Gear would have required him to quit his day job of being a mechanic, and interfered with hit motor bike racing pursuits.