While Honda won’t release more info on its new 800cc V4-based adventure bike and 1,200cc V4 adventure concept until a day or two from now, the folks at Oliepeil snapped this photo of the Honda booth, which shows a bike very similar to Honda’s teaser image. Looking very GS-esque, it will be interesting to see the results on Honda’s foray into the adventure bike segment with a V4 motor.
Source: Oliepeil.nl
Reigning Moto2 World Champion Toni Elias will return to the big show for the 2011 season, as the Spanish rider has secured a contract with the LCR Honda satellite team. Elias has been on fire this season in Moto2, easily establishing himself as the dominate rider in the class. Looking to secure Moto2 as the feeder series for MotoGP, Dorna is rumored to have helped secure Elias’s return to premiere racing, after he lost his ride in the San Carlo Gresini Honda squad in 2009.
Do not adjust your computer screen, this not a revised version of the VFR1200F, nor is it the V4 adventure bike we expect Honda to debut next week, it’s not even the bastard love child from a CBR and a Cylon, it is in fact the brand new 2011 Honda CBR250R. A 250cc motorcycle for the rest of us, Honda hopes to snag new riders by offering a more practical street bike in the Japanese, European, Australian, and yes, even American markets later this spring.
Raising the bar a bit, the CBR250R comes with optional C-ABS brakes, which will like be mandatory in the European Union, if the EU Commission has anything to say about it. With performance figures coming in at 26hp and 17 lbs•ft of torque, the fuel-injected Honda CBR250R isn’t going to blow anyone out of the water, but that’s sort the point behind the quarter-liter bike, which should be more than capable of scooting around a young rider on city streets and back-road routes.
Honda continues to tease its V4-based adventure bike ahead of its unveiling at EICMA next week. Finally showing off the actual lines of the machine, Honda has clearly made a cross between the CB1000R and VFR1200F in this design. Tall and purposeful, the concept clearly has the extra travel to soak-up an uncertain path, but Honda insists the bike is designed for on-road use. We dig the single-sided swingarm, but it will be interesting to see how Honda finishes off the exhaust pipe, and of course the final fit and finish of the design as a whole (the tail, like on the VFR1200F, seems to be an afterthought).
It’s a bit of irony that Casey Stoner was the first MotoGP alien to to make his move in the 2010 silly season, yet is the last MotoGP alien whose fate we know completely. Signing with Honda it was assumed that Stoner would be a part of a three-man team within Repsol Honda, with HRC saying as much during its press announcement with the Australian rider. When the budget necessary to field a three-man team failed to materialize from Repsol, HRC began looking for other options, with the most prominent being a single-man team (likely with Casey Stoner), possibly sponsored by Red Bull. Unable to get the energy drink company to foot the bill, HRC then turned to satellite squad Gresini, where Marco Simoncelli, another HRC contracted rider, currently resides.
Andrea Dovizioso seemingly drew the short-straw in that arrangement, with HRC pressuring the Italian to move into Gresini with the promise of factory support being made for both riders. Dovizioso is reported as having a performance clause in his contract that guarantees him a seat in a factory team should he meet certain criteria. With Dovi honoring his end of the agreement, he looked to HRC to honor its side of the contract, and a Honda Gresini ride is not what the Italian had in mind. Making matters worse is HRC’s history of not honoring support agreements to riders once they leave the folds of the factory team. As such Dovizioso held his ground, and rightfully so.
With the 2011 season likely to see four factory-backed Honda riders, something had to give, and that something seems to be Repsol Honda. According to MotoWorld, Repsol Honda agreed at the Australian GP to up its MotoGP funding from €10 million to €15 million, and support a three-man Repsol Honda factory team. With Stoner, Pedrosa, and Dovizioso tucked away under one tent for the 2011 season, and Marco Simoncelli staying in Gresini Honda, that leaves a vacancy in the quasi-satellite team that will surely be filled by Hiroshi Aoyama.
Honda continues to tease us with concept sketches of its VFR inspired middleweight adventure bike, this time with a drawing of the bike head-on. Expected to have a smaller displacement than the VFR1200F sport-tourer, the advenutre-esque concept will fit a V4 power plant in a more upright and exposed frame and bodywork.
Showing the stacked headlight design, Honda’s new V4 will have a slim profile for better high-speed stability and engine/rider cooling. Honda is also saying that a “floating” instrument cluster will come on the bike, which should help keep eyes pointed down the road’s path.
Honda has begun teasing its NRS250 race bike, which many believe will be the basis to the company’s involvement in the Moto3 racing class that will replace 125GP racing in 2012. NRS stands for “Next Racing Standard”, not to be confused with NSR series of two-stroke machines from Honda (Editor’s note: Great naming convention, right?), and not much is known about the bike beyond these dark photos.
Released in Italy today, Honda has taken the wraps off a concept drawing that shows a new crossover motorcycle, based off the VFR1200F. Super-imposed over the shape of the new VFR, this new concept rendering shows a largely reduced fairing, in anticipation of its more “adventurous” segment orientation. If rumors are to believed on the internet, the bike may not share the same 1237cc displacement as its sport-touring cousin, and instead will sport a middleweight displacement (800cc’s seems to be a popular number).
This new VFR is one (or two?) of eight new models Honda has said it will debut in Milan. One of the other rumored models is a 1200cc concept bike, which will reportedly be a 2012 model year motorcycle with Honda’s dual-clutch transmission, we’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out the rest of what Honda has in store for us.
Just a couple weeks after fracturing his collarbone in three places at Motegi, Dani Pedrosa will once again take to his Honda RC212V, as the Spanish rider has indicated he will take part in Friday’s FP1 in Australia. Taking the Malaysian GP off in order to heal his shoulder, Pedrosa may no longer be in the running for the MotoGP Championship, but he’s shown strong improvements on the Honda RC212V the past few races, a trend he’ll be keen to continue through the rest of the season as he fights for second place in the standings.
After breaking his collarbone during practice at the Japanese GP, Dani Pedrosa’s chances of racing at Sepang for the Malaysian GP were held highly in question. With some close to the team suggesting Pedrosa would attempt to race in Malaysia, a press release this morning seemingly confirms that the Spaniard is out for the weekend’s races, instead intending to focus on a return at Phillip Island next week. This announcement is big news for Jorge Lorenzo, who is trying to lock up the 2010 MotoGP Championship. With only Dani Pedrosa having a mathematical chance of stealing the crown from his fellow Spaniard, Lorenzo now only has to finish 9th in Sunday’s race to claim his crown. Press release after the jump.
From the Aragon GP today comes news that Dani Pedrosa has signed a two-year contract renewal with Honda, which will see the Spaniard on a factory-backed bike for the 2011 and 2012 seasons. The news has been expected for some time, so it’s hardly surprising to see HRC tap Pedrosa for another stint of racing, and Spanish sponsor Repsol is expected to be along for the ride with another one-year extension added to their sponsorship.