Shooting Saturday’s practice sessions and the first race of the 2019 season, Stephen brings us our first glimpse of superbike racing action this year.
We won’t hit you with any spoilers, but if the rest of the season pans out like Race 1 did on Saturday, WorldSBK fans are in for quite a treat this year.
Photos: © 2019 Stephen McClements – All Rights Reserved
We have two Steves in Phillip Island this weekend for the WorldSBK, and for this gallery we are featuring the work of Mr. Stephen McClement. Shooting Friday’s practice sessions, Stephen brings us our first on-track glimpses of the 2019 season in proper.
The day’s activities saw Alvaro Bautista keeping his top spot from the testing days, but he only leads Jonathan Rea by a narrow margin of 0.014 seconds. Leon Haslam is in the charge as well, just 0.155 seconds back himself, while Lowes and Camier were closer to half a second back.
Chaz Davies finds himself surprisingly over a second behind his teammate, which doesn’t bode well for his championship. Though, we have many, many laps still to come from the season-opener.
And also, we have many more photos from Stephen still to come. Until then, enjoy this modest selection.
Photos: © 2019 Stephen McClements – All Rights Reserved
Steve sent us these photos from the WorldSBK test at Phillip Island, and it seemed like a good excuse to try the new “gallery post” function we’ve been working on for the site. Let us know what you think of the snaps, as well as this new feature.
Also, get excited for looks to be a cracking year in the WorldSBK Championship. The Australian round should be a real scrap, and it will be interesting to see the new Superpole Race format in the flesh. All that being said, who is your favorite to win?
Photos: © 2019 Steve English – All Rights Reserved
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A hometown favorite, a custom from Moto-Mucci caught our eye at this year’s One Motorcycle Show in Portland, and we thought you would like it too, so we snapped some photos of it.
The build starts off with a KTM 300 XC-W Six Days two-stroke dirt bike, and goes further by turning it into a rather fetching street tracker model.
Another day, and another factory MotoGP team debut. This week’s entry is actually a two-fer from the KTM camp, as we see in their race livery both the factory-back Red Bull KTM team debut (Pol Espargaro & Johann Zarco), as well as the factory-supported KTM Tech3 squad (Hafizh Syahrin & Miguel Oliveira).
KTM will be looking to make big steps this year in the MotoGP Championship, as the team stalled on its progress last year. This is part of the reason for a two-pronged approach in the paddock, and for the Tech3 outfit getting substantial support and involvement in the development of the KTM RC16 race bike.
When it comes to attractive motorbikes, we have devoted some critical pixels towards the folks at Zero Motorcycles. Let’s be frank, the design side of the equation hasn’t historically been the brand’s strong suit. The company is making progress, however.
Now, when it comes to custom motorcycles, there has been a quiet resistance to using electric models as starting points for creation, though occasionally we see an electron-powered machine at a bike show that captures our attention.
Today though, we see the happy merger of those two thoughts, with this Zero FX custom supermoto by Huge Design, which debuted this weekend at the The One Motorcycle Show in Portland, Oregon, and was easily our favorite bike at the show.
What is one more press launch for today’s news cycle, am I right? A bit of a shakeup to the lineup, the Monster Energy Yamaha team debuted in Jakarta today, and as you would expect from the name, the energy drink company takes over as title sponsor from Movistar.
The names and faces are the same though, with Valentino Rossi and Maverick Viñales at the helm of the 2019 Yamaha YZR-M1 MotoGP race bike, which has a new livery on its side.
Like most of the MotoGP team debuts that we see ahead of the Qatar preseason test, what is offered as a first look at the 2019 racing platform is really more like the 2018 bike with next year’s livery.
That doesn’t make the sight any less fantastic though, as detailed photos of these apex predators is always a treat.
Next up on our list from the MotoGP paddock is the ECSTAR Suzuki squad (check out Ducati and Honda too), which includes Alex Rins and Joan Mir.
Not much changes for the livery in the 2019 season, though we do see Suzuki has updated the fairings a touch. The tail section has a more dramatic drop as it comes to a point, and the vents on the front fairing have slightly different shapes than what was shown to us in 2018.
It was 12 years ago that Ruben Xaus became internet-famous for a photo that depicted him sliding a Ducati Hypermotard 1100 into a turn, thumb up in the air triumphantly…like a boss. It was an unbelievable sight, both figuratively and literally.
Back in the day, I would often see comments on the photo that speculated what the next shot looked like. Bike tumbling through the gravel, a yard sale of parts? The rider in a stretcher on the way to the hospital, after it all went horribly wrong?
The Ducati Hypermotard 950 is the third generation of this street-sized supermoto, and in its design, Ducati borrowed heavily from the previous iterations.
As you can see, the mechanics of the 950 machine don’t wander far from the 939 that came before it, and the styling is a modern homage to the lines found on the original 1100 model.
As such, consider the 950 like a greatest hits album from the Hypermotard lineup.
One of the more intriguing story lines we are following in the coming WorldSBK season is the arrival of BMW Motorrad in the superbike paddock. For the 2019 season, BMW has partnered with the Shaun Muir Racing team, with riders Tom Sykes and Markus Reiterberger.
With an all new superbike platform to develop and work with, our attention is on what this machine can do, especially with such a high-level team and duo of riders.
With SMR officially unveiling the team at their preseason test in Portugal, we sent our man Steve English into the pit box to get some up-close photos of the WorldSBK-spec BMW S1000RR for the 2019 season.
As you would expect, the details on this bike are very interesting.
