This week marks a milestone for BMW Motorrad, as the company rolled its 500,000th boxer-twin GS series off the production line, fittingly a BMW R1200GS.
Designed to be the perfect blend of an off-road and street bike with everyday drivability, the top-selling GS series has captured the hearts and minds of adventure enthusiasts for the past 34 years.
So you want to watch AMA Pro Road Racing and AMA Pro Flat Track this year, but because DMG screwed the pooch on securing any form of TV deal, you think you’re up an apex without a kneepuck, right? Not so fast there speed racer.
To its credit, the Daytona Motorsports Group has created its own live streaming site for AMA Pro Racing, IMSA, and NASCAR content that is not on television: FansChoice.tv, which will be your go-to destination for watching the Daytona 200 live this weekend.
“Get them while they’re young” — it worked for the cigarette industry, and the maxim holds true for motorcycle racing as well. Creating an effective system to cultivate and train young riders is the single largest reason that today we see Spanish riders dominating Grand Prix racing.
A system built in large part by the Godfather of Roadracing, Kenny Roberts Sr. himself, Spanish riders have enjoyed a federation that supports young riders and paces them throughout their career. The process has been so effective that the Italians have recently set to copying it, with their star pupil being Moto3’s Romano Fenati.
For the 2014 season, Fenati will be aboard the SKY Racing Team by VR|46, so it should come as little surprise that the personal brand of Valentino Rossi is lending its weight further to finding the next G.O.A.T. As such, the VR|46 Riders Academy has been established by Rossi and a crew of top-level instructors.
After three years of uncertainty, the Nürburgring has finally been sold, and not to an American investment group as had been rumored, but instead to a German real estate development group: Capricorn Development.
Capricorn is said to have paid €77 million for the iconic race course and its surrounding facilities, with the Düsseldorf-based firm promising to pump another €25 million into the property once they take full-ownership of it on January 1, 2015.
Speaking to the VeneziePost (subscription required in order to read the article), Dainese Founder Lino Dainese has confirmed the news we broke last month about the Italian apparel manufacturer being in talks for investment, or possible acquisition.
According to the report, Dainese says the company came close to inking a deal with an unnamed private equity group, but terminated the talks because the parties could not come to terms with their agreement.
It is finally official. Yamaha have today announced that they have signed a five-year deal with Spanish telecommunications company Movistar to act as title sponsor for the factory Yamaha team.
The deal will see Movistar branding appear prominently on fairings, leathers, team uniform, team trucks, etc, and the team be called Movistar Yamaha MotoGP.
The deal had been rumored since the start of the year, and had been confirmed unofficially last week, when Movistar presented its TV schedules. But the formal announcement came only today, when the Spanish firm unveiled the price structure for its pay-per-view offering in Madrid.
When you tell most people that you ride a motorcycle, their usual question is “so, what do you ride, a Ducati?” The only other brand name so synonymous with motorcycling would be Harley-Davidson.
The famed Italian brand’s distinctive Euro-styling and cultural cachet seemed to resonate with nearly 45,000 people in 2013, as the brand from Bologna sold a record 44,287 motorbikes worldwide last year.
Sales in South Asia rose by 26% with 5,200 motorcycles sold, while the United States, Ducati’s top market, accounted for 24% in sales, followed by Italy at 11.3% and Germany at 10.7%.
It was nearly a month ago that we heard that Spanish firms Gas Gas and Ossa had merged their operations in order to take on the difficult economic climate in Spain. The firms’ business position should be even stronger now, as Gas Gas has acquired the IP from Moto Italia, the holding company of Husqvarna’s remains.
When KTM’s Stefan Pierer acquired Husqvarna through his Pierer Industrie AG company, he did not buy all of the once Swedish motorcycle brand from BMW Motorrad. What wasn’t transferred into the Austrian company’s control was left behind as a new company, Moto Italia, which now will find a new home in Spain with Gas Gas.
According to a press release issued by Kawasaki Motors Corporation U.S.A. (KMC), Effective April 1st, Masafumi Nakagawa will be assuming the position of company President, replacing Takeshi Teranishi, as he takes command of KMC Japan.
Talking to a European colleague the other day, I had to remind him that the United States is just as big and diverse as the European Union, with our country’s states being as unique as the sovereigns involved in the EU. The same goes for motorcycling in the US, with our sport and passion taking different shapes depending on your geography of this Great Union.
It tickled my fancy then, when today I saw a breakdown of motorcyclists by state in the United States, especially when the results were displayed on a per capita basis. Of the 8,410,255 motorcycles registered in the United States (D.O.T. figure, as of 2011), which states have the most motorcyclists by volume? The answer shouldn’t surprise you as California, Texas, and Florida take the top honors, likely due to their mild winters and coastal routes.
But which states have the highest concentrations of motorcyclists? Now that is where things get more interesting: South Dakota, New Hampshire, and Iowa. You’re a no good dirty liar if you say you predicted those three states to be at top of the list — with each stating sporting 12, 17, 18 and people per bike, respectively.
Following reports of financial problems and unpaid bills between Forward Racing and FTR, FTR today issued a press statement clarifying the situation. In the press release, FTR praises the progress of the Yamaha FTR project at Sepang, and restates its support for Forward’s Moto2 program as well.
FTR’s Managing Director Jon Jones states that “there is [sic] no technical or financial issues between FTR and Forward Racing.” The statement goes on to clarify that the Forward Moto2 program has been temporarily put on hold to allow FTR to focus on the MotoGP project, and that the Moto2 project will be resumed at an unspecified later date.