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Up-Close with the Honda “True Adventure” Prototype

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One of the more anticipated motorcycles at the 2014 EICMA show, off-roaders were expecting to see the new Honda Africa Twin in Milan this week. Instead, Honda trotted out what they’re calling the “True Adventure” prototype. Despite not being a production model, the True Adventure prototype looks ready for prime time, and we got a series of “up-close” photos of the machine.

Most obvious is the bike’s parallel twin engine, which is rumored to be 1,000cc in displacement. That sizing/weight class seems to jive with the dual front brake discs, which also sports an ABS tone ring. We can expect Honda to have traction control operating off the front and rear wheel speeds as well, and other electronic packages as well.

Less noticeable is the fact that the Africa Twin prototype doesn’t have a clutch lever or gear shifter on it. Whether its an overshight from Honda, or the sign of a new shifting mechanism from the Japanese manufacturer is up for debate, but it’s an interesting development, for sure.

Check out the photos after the jump, and let us know if you see any other details from the muddied and camouflaged show bike.

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Bikes

Honda Africa Twin “True Adventure” Prototype Revealed

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Honda doesn’t have any actual new bikes to show at the 2014 EICMA show, but it did bring two “prototypes” of the bikes we most eagerly wanted to see from Big Red.

We already posted about the Honda RC213V-S prototype street bike with MotoGP blood, and here we have what Honda isn’t calling an Africa Twin, just yet.

The long-rumored dual-sport looks quite similar to the renderings we have already seen, and Honda is using the working name “True Adventure” for now.

Expected to be based off the company’s Honda CRF450 Rally race bike, the prototype diverges with its parallel-twin engine, the headers for which can be seen in the photo above.

Like the RC213V-S, we hopefully will see the finished machine at the Tokyo Motor Show, later next month. Until then, chew on these photos from the Honda stand in Milan.

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Bikes

Honda RC213V-S Street Bike Prototype Unveiled

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Perhaps the most highly anticipated machine at the EICMA show, Honda has finally debuted its road-going MotoGP bike, dubbed the Honda RC213V-S.

Still officially considered a prototype (along with the Honda Africa Twin off-road machine), the RC213V-s is essentially what you would imagine, an RC213V MotoGP bike with lights.

Brought onto the EICMA stage by Marc Marquez, the RC213V-S is a stunner in its pure carbon fairings, but we think the Japanese flag livery on the static machine takes the cake.

Honda isn’t talking specs at this time, and hopefully we will know more by the time the Tokyo Motor Show rolls around. So, we’ll just have to drool over these photos until then. Check them out, after the jump.

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Bikes

Honda Trademarks “RC213V-S” in Europe

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Adding more fuel to the fire, concerning Honda’s long-awaited V4 production superbike, the Japanese manufacturer has registered the trademark “RC213V-S” with the European Union.

As MotoGP fans should already know, next year’s production race bike will be called the Honda RC213V-RS, which should make the more plain “S” designation sound suspiciously like a street-going model.

Not exactly the most glamorous name for a road bike, especially one of this stature, one could not fault Honda for wanting to draw a link between the production model and its GP-racing lineage.

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WSBK

WSBK: Musical Chairs – Rea to Kawasaki, Guintoli to Honda

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The end of the 2014 World Superbike championship, wrapped up last night at Qatar, has triggered a series of official rider announcements for 2015.

Two of the most anticipated announcements were made on Monday, with official confirmation that Jonathan Rea would be leaving Pata Honda to join the Kawasaki Racing Team in World Superbikes, while the seat he is vacating at the Ten Kate Pata Honda team will be filled by newly-crowned 2014 World Superbike champion Sylvain Guintoli.

Rea will line up alongside Tom Sykes, while Guintoli will be teammate to World Supersport champion Michael van der Mark.

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MotoGP

MotoGP: Casey Stoner Finishes Two Days of Testing for HRC

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Casey Stoner has made a temporary return to MotoGP, completing two days of testing for Honda at Motegi. Over the two days of testing, Stoner focused on the 2015 version of Honda’s RC213V, the Australian comparing the settings used by Repsol Honda’s current riders, Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa, to see how they work with the new bike.

Stoner also worked on preparing the 2015 further ahead of its debut at the Valencia test after the final race of the season. Finally, he also spent some time on the development versions of Michelin’s MotoGP tires, as the French manufacturer prepares to take over as spec-tire supplier from 2016 onwards. As is their custom with all testing, Honda did not release any lap times.

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MotoGP

Marc Marquez is the 2014 MotoGP World Champion

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After the results of the Japanese GP, Marc Marquez has clinched the 2014 MotoGP World Championship. Securing the win on Honda’s home race, on its corporate-owned track no less, Marquez is now officially a four-time World Champion, with half those Championships coming from the MotoGP class.

The celebrations are surely still underway in Japan as we publish this, and rightfully so, after the masterful season Marquez has put in thus far for 2014. Helping to commemorate the occasion, Repsol has produced a short video, which you can watch is after the jump, along with a bevy of photos.

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MotoGP

Friday Summary at Motegi: Hard Braking Hondas, Rabat’s Imperious Pace, & The Moto3 Manufacturer Mix

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Will Motegi turn into another Marc Marquez show? Not on the evidence of the first day of practice. Marquez made the highlight reel alright, but for all the wrong reasons. A crash in the first session of free practice shook his confidence a little, and convinced him to take a more cautious approach during the afternoon.

The crash was typical of Motegi. A headshake coming out of Turn 4 put the front brake disks into a wobble, banging the pads back into the calipers. With the 340mm disks being compulsory at Motegi, there was enough mass there to push the pads and pistons a long way back into the calipers indeed.

Marquez arrived at Turn 5 to find he had no front brake, and started pumping his front brake lever frantically. By the time the front brake started to bite, it was too late to do much good. With the wall approaching fast, Marquez decided to abandon ship, jumping off the bike in the gravel trap.

Arriving at a corner at 260 km/h to find he had no brakes had been “a bit frightening,” Marquez said. In the afternoon, he had left himself a little bit more margin for error, but that meant he had not matched the pace of the fast guys: Jorge Lorenzo, Dani Pedrosa, the surprising Stefan Bradl, Andrea Dovizioso and Valentino Rossi.

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MotoGP

Marc VDS Racing’s Move to MotoGP Gets Official

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The difference between a handshake an an officially signed contract is just under four weeks, it seems. Late on Sunday night after the race at Misano, the Marc VDS Racing team put a message on Twitter announcing they would be moving up to MotoGP for the next two years, racing a factory-backed Honda RC213V with Scott Redding aboard.

Honda, however, was far from pleased with the team’s adoption of 21st Century technology to communicate with fans and media, and the Tweet was quickly taken down.

Though agreement had been reached at Misano on all of the details – a three-year deal to lease a factory-spec Honda RC213V, and putting Scott Redding on the bike for the 2015 and 2016 seasons – HRC deemed that the deal was not yet ready to be announced. Though the contract was public knowledge, the team went silent on the deal.

Until now. Today, the Marc VDS Racing team finally officially confirmed what we have known for nearly a month. The team will be competing in MotoGP in 2015, with Scott Redding aboard a factory-spec RC213V.

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MotoGP

Thursday Summary at Motegi: The Race Nature Always Seems to Conspire Against

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Part of the Japanese round of MotoGP always seems to involve learning a new name for a natural phenomenon. In 2010, we heard of Eyjafjallajökull for the first time, the volcano which awoke from under its ice cap and halted air travel in large parts of Europe and Asia.

We laughed as newsreaders and MotoGP commentators tried to pronounce the name of the Icelandic volcano and ice cap, and the race was moved from the start of the season to October.

A year later, in April 2011, it was T?hoku that was the name on everyone’s lips. The massive earthquake which shook Japan and triggered an enormous tsunami, killing nearly 16,000 people and badly damaging the Fukushima nuclear power station.

Again the Motegi race was moved to October, by which time the incredible resilience and industriousness had the track ready to host the MotoGP circus. 2012 turned out to be a relatively quiet year, but 2013 saw the tail end of typhoon Francisco ravage the region, causing the first day and a half of practice to be lost to fog and rain.

So it comes as no surprise that the 2014 round of MotoGP at Motegi teaches us yet another new name. This time it is Vongfong, a category 5 super typhoon which threatens the race in Japan.

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