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Racing

Michael Jordan Motorsports Leaves AMA Pro Racing — Headed to World Superbike? MotoGP?

By Jensen Beeler 10/30/2013 35 Comments

News has dropped that the Michael Jordan Motorsports (MJM) team will not be returning to AMA Pro Racing next season due to the fact that the National Guard would also be ceasing its involvement with the domestic motorcycle racing series (the Army National Guard was the chief sponsor of Michael Jordan Motorsports, and was also the title sponsor of the AMA Pro SuperBike class).

Talking to RoadRacingWorld on Tuesday, MJM’s Kreig Robinson confirmed that the National Guard’s lack of renewal with DMG stemmed from AMA Pro Racing’s waning TV viewership and dwindling event crowds.

With sponsoring AMA Pro Racing no longer making smart business sense for the National Guard, Robinson said he had little to argue with in regards to the National Guard’s decision.

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News

Momoto Sues Petronas for $83 Million over Petronas FP1

By Jensen Beeler 10/28/2013 14 Comments

The story that surrounds Petronas and its ill-fated Petronas FP1 World Superbike project is one full of intrigue, and was seemingly put to bed long ago when the Malaysian oil giant folded its motorcycle business and racing plans in 2006.

The story was brought back to life though when a bunker full of Petronas FP1 street bikes was discovered in the UK. The bikes have their own intriguing story of how the Malays did, or did not, “bend” the homologation rules for WSBK, and how the machines then found their way to be forgotten in a bunker in Essex.

With that discovery, new life was spurred into the Petronas FP1, whose fire-breathing three-cylinder engine and powder blue paint scheme has tantalized the fancy of collectors worldwide for some time now.

This gave birth to the Momoto MM1 project, an outfit that bought the 129 derelict Petronas bikes, and rebranded them for sale just last year. That venture has hit a snag though, as taxes and duties for a vast majority of the machines were apparently not paid, which resulted in the Malaysian government seizing all 129 motorcycles, which in-turn has lead to a recent lawsuit for RM260 million ($83 million USD).

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News

BRD Motorcycles Raises $1 Million, Adds Tesla Founder to Advisory, & Announces First Dealership

By Jensen Beeler 10/10/2013 3 Comments

If you lookup the word “hustle” in the dictionary, you might see a portrait of the BRD Motorcycles crew. We haven’t heard much from the San Francisco startup in the past year or so, well nothing official at least, but today the BRD crew has a plethora of milestones to announce.

First up is the addition of $1 million in funding, which was lead by the strategic investment firm Third Shore Group (TSG). The added funds will help keep the BRD’s lights on, and help the EV company bring its RedShift electric motorcycle series into production. As a part of the funding agreement, BRD will also receive human resources from TSG, in addition to opening a satellite facility just outside of Detroit, in Royal Oak, Michigan.

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MotoGP

Gigi Dall’Igna Replacing Bernhard Gobmeier at Ducati Corse

By Jensen Beeler 10/10/2013 21 Comments

Bernhard Gobmeier hasn’t even spent a full-year at Ducati Corse yet, though the German’s time in Borgo Panigale will officially come to an end at the end of the MotoGP season. Taking a “prestigious and strategic position within the Motorsport organisation of the Volkswagen Group,” Gobmeier will be replaced by Aprilia Racing’s Luigi “Gigi” Dall’Igna, as was rumored earlier this week.

Dall’Igna brings with him an arsenal of experience in managing Aprilia’s World Superbike and MotoGP efforts, and his first task at Ducati Corse is an obvious one: right the ship.

With Ducati Corse listlessly floating in MotoGP for the past few years, and now hitting a wall in WSBK as well, Dall’Igna’s move to Bologna may be a small one from Noale, but the task at hand is monumental. Ducati Corse explains the move and new hierarchy in its press release is after the jump.

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Bimota Now Swiss Owned?

By Jensen Beeler 09/12/2013 9 Comments

Known just as much for its exotic motorcycles, as its tumultuous relationship with financial solvency, Bimota as a company is a bit of a quagmire. The Italian motorcycle house showed its racing chops with the Bimota HB4 Moto2 race bike, debuted a bevy of Ducati-powered models last year, and the Italians have branched out with the BMW S1000RR-powered Bimota BB2.

Now announcing a change in its ownership, Bimota has seemingly been bought by a still-unnamed Swiss financier. With production expected to stay in Rimini, Italy and with Italians said still to be managing the company, it seems that Bimota has just found a deeper wallet to extract cash from. At least, that what appears to be the case from Bimota’s bizarrely worded press release.

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Brammo Offers Guaranteed Trade-in Program

By Jensen Beeler 08/28/2013 4 Comments

Here’s some EV news for yah: Brammo has announced a guaranteed trade-in program for its electric motorcycle offerings, which basically says that if you buy a new Brammo motorcycle between now and the end of September 2013, the Ashland, Oregon company will guarantee that bike’s trade-in price (for another Brammo motorcycle of course) to be at the original MSRP for the next 12 months.

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Racing

Why Crutchlow’s Move to Ducati Is Smarter Than It Looks

By David Emmett 08/10/2013 27 Comments

The news that Cal Crutchlow has signed a two-year deal with Ducati led to howls of despair from MotoGP fans, especially among those in the UK. Why, they asked, would Crutchlow willingly leave the Tech 3 Yamaha team and the as-near-factory-as-possible M1 to take on the miserable task of taming the Ducati?

Why throw away another year on a bike which he knows he can score podiums, and perhaps even wins on, in exchange for riding a bike which has been a proven failure since Casey Stoner last climbed off it and headed next door to the Repsol Honda garage?

If Valentino Rossi, the biggest name and most politically powerful rider in motorcycle racing couldn’t make the bike competitive, what chance does Crutchlow stand?

Though only Crutchlow himself fully understands the motives behind his choice, he has left plenty of evidence offering some insight into why he has signed for Ducati. Though fans around the world have tried to point to a single reason – usually either money or having a factory bike – the decision-making process is far, far more complex than that.

It is a case study of the complex thought process that lies behind the decisions a rider must make when steering his career. With so little time spent at their peak, and so many factors outside of their control, the decisions a rider makes are not as clear-cut and simple as the fans would like them to be.

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News

US Motorcycles Sales Decline 5.2% for the First-Half of 2013

By Jensen Beeler 08/01/2013 17 Comments

Don’t call it a comeback, because even though the US motorcycle industry beat the Motorcycle Industry Council’s projections last year, sales so far for 2013 are looking less than stellar in the first-half of the year.

Down 5.2% from January to June, motorcycle sales were hit mostly by abysmal losses in the scooter segment (23.3%), and helped along by modest losses in the on-road segment (5.3%). Adding more to the misery, dual-sports suffered a 3.4% drop in the first half of the year, though surprisingly off-road bikes showed a gain, increasing 5.4% over Q1 & Q2.

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Racing

BMW Motorrad ‘Strategically Realigns’ Itself out of WSBK

By Jensen Beeler 07/25/2013 37 Comments

Fresh on the team’s 1-2 victory at Moscow Raceway, BMW Motorrad has dropped a bomb on the World Superbike paddock, announcing that it would no long support a factory team in the production-based series — effective at the end of the 2013 season. In other words, Marco Melandri and Chaz Davies will be unemployed in a few months’ time.

Citing a “strategic realignment” of the company’s resources in motorsport, the move by BMW Motorrad is perhaps unsurprising, as zie Germans consolidated their WSBK efforts this year, with the factory supporting BMW Italia’s BMW Motorrad Goldbet SBK team, rather than fielding two efforts in the series.

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Racing

From the Department of “You’ve Got to be Freaking Kidding Me DMG!” – No TV Coverage for AMA at Laguna Seca???

By Jensen Beeler 07/17/2013 32 Comments

A couple hours ago, Roadracing World broke the story that AMA Pro Road Racing will not be aired on TV during the series’ first stop of the year at Laguna Seca this weekend — and for bonus points, AMA racing action likely won’t even be seen on the screens around the track, including the team hospitality suites and pit boxes. The word you are now looking for is “shitastrophe” — it’s in the dictionary, right next to the DMG logo.

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News

Hero MotoCorp Buys 49.2% Stake in Erik Buell Racing for $25 Million

By Jensen Beeler 07/01/2013 23 Comments

A plethora of Indian Financial publications are reporting that Hero MotoCorp has bought a 49.2% stake in Erik Buell Racing for $25 million. Hero MotoCorp is India’s largest two-wheel manufacturer, and for a year now has partnered with Erik Buell Racing for technical development, as well as sponsoring the American company’s AMA Pro Road Racing team for the past two seasons.

Today’s news confirms numerous rumors we have heard about the Hero investing in EBR. Acquiring only 49.2% of Erik Buell Racing, Hero has only a minority stake in EBR, and while we cannot confirm the information, we would imagine that the odd 49.2% ownership was done to keep Erik Buell as the majority shareholder in his company.

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