You don’t have to be a raging Ducati Corse fan, or even a fan of Andrea Iannone, in order to appreciate the humor in the Italian rider’s winter test helmet this week at Sepang.
In case you missed it, the bright red AGV Pista GP helmet is adorned with a familiar face, Gavin the seagull. If you don’t remember Gavin, we are sure the mentioning of last year’s Phillip Island race will help jog your memory.
Coming down the hill, into Turn 10, Andrea Iannone found a spectator whose vantage point was a little too close to the action. The seagull, finally realizing the error of his ways, took flight, though not in time to avoid the outcome everyone feared.
The bird struck Iannone’s Ducati Desmosedici GP15, while it was in mid-flight, leaving a gaping whole in the front of the race bike and a puff of feathers in its wake.
Joking aside, Iannone was lucky not to be injured in the collision, and actually went on to take third in the race. Bird strikes are not uncommon at Phillip Island, and they can cause grave injuries when they occur at speed. Thankfully for Iannone, Turn 10 is one of the slowest corners on the Australian track.
While we mourn the loss of Gavin, as he has made his way to the big race track in the sky, it is good to see that he has not been forgotten. A few photos of Iannone’s helmet are after the jump.
Coming to the end of two weeks straight on the road, our final stop is in San Diego, CA for the international press launch of the Ducati XDiavel power cruiser.
Like its sibling and namesake, the Ducati Diavel, the XDiavel blurs the line between sport bike and cruiser, showing the Italian brand’s interpretation of an ubiquitous American motorcycling concept.
The XDiavel treads further into the cruiser segment than the Diavel does though, and as such it features feet-forward controls, a belt final drive, a teardrop-shaped gas tank, and a 240-width rear tire.
Bologna hopes that we will still regard the XDiavel as “true” Ducati though, with its Testastretta DVT 1262 v-twin engine producing 156hp, while making its peak torque of 95 lbs•ft at only 5,000 rpm.
Upping the performance factor is a suite of electronics: traction control, cornering ABS, launch control, wheelie control, ride-by-wire, and an IMU.
Will all of this make a power cruiser we wish we had in our garage? Well, that’s why we ride these things. So far though, the initial impression is favorable. Photos don’t do the lines of the XDiavel justice. I’m still not sure it’s my cup of tea, but we’ll let the brew marinate a bit longer, and see how it tastes.
These are the first images of the 2016 Suzuki GSX-RR MotoGP race bike from the Japanese manufacturer, the same machine that is currently lapping around the Sepang International Circuit this week for MotoGP’s first official test of 2016.
As you can see, not much has changed visually, though obviously a lot of the development has occurred beneath the fairings of the Suzuki GSX-RR. What we can see though are subtle changes to the twin-spar aluminum frame, which has now been completely filled in on both sides.
Also, there is a new and modified air ducts on the side fairings, likely for extra cooling – on the left side, it’s near the top of the bike, while on the right side, the lower ducts has been enlarged to expose the exhaust header more. The shape of the exhaust has also changed, making for a more sweeping design.
Of course, the big news for Suzuki’s MotoGP program is the addition of a seamless gearbox. For now, Suzuki’s seamlesss gearbox only does seamless upshifts, but it is likely before the season starts that seamless downshifting will be added to the design.
The gearbox was a top-request from riders Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales, as was additional power. Early indications from Sepang seem to suggest that the Suzuki riders team will have a little bit more juice on tap for the 2016 season as well.
Super high-resolution shots are after the jump. We expect Suzuki to release more photos (hopefully of its other rider) in the coming weeks.
Casey Stoner got the first testing miles of his return to Ducati under his belt on Saturday. The Australian started slowly and steadily, doing a lot of short runs to get a feel for the Ducati Desmosedici GP15, on which he spent most of the day, before upping the pace later in the afternoon.
Journalists present at the test said Stoner looked a little stiff in his early laps, not getting either elbow or knee down, but soon started to relax, and look more like his old self.
He had every reason to be wary: the last time Stoner rode a race bike on the road was during the Suzuka 8 Hours, where a throttle cable malfunction saw him thrown from the bike, injuring his scapula and tibia in the process.
Furthermore, this was his first time on a MotoGP bike for a year, his first time riding the Ducati GP15 – a very different beast indeed to the GP10, the last Ducati Stoner raced – and his first time on the Michelins. Despite that, he told reporters he was very happy with how the test went.
There is a tongue-in-cheek joke amongst moto-journalists when it comes to new MV Agusta models: that each new machine is “the best motorcycle yet” from the Italian brand. The unspoken punchline of course is that each new model has such an incredibly low bar to surpass, that it is a relatively easy to be the next “best” motorcycle in the lineup, and thus it’s easy to lead a bike review with such a hyperbolic statement.
That joke has been slowly fading away though, and it is becoming more of an honest reality, as MV Agusta’s motorcycle lineup has evolved from a family of luridly appealing motorcycles that unfortunately are also deeply flawed, to a brand of machine that can boast the competence to match its striking beauty.
Nothing better proves this point than MV Agusta’s three-cylinder platform, which was mired by half-baked electronics and fueling at its debut in 2013, and now survives as a supersport/middleweight platform that should be on every rider’s short-list of must-ride motorcycles.
It is this trend that sees MV Agusta now updating its 800cc platform for 2016 (the 675cc machines will see an update soon enough), notably with Euro4 emission controls in full-effect.
It seemed when MV Agusta debuted only a solitary machine at the 2015 EICMA show, the MV Agusta Brutale 800, with less power, more weight, and subtle design revision, that the Varese-based company had taken a step backwards from its forward progress. Now that we have had the opportunity to ride the machine in Málaga, Spain – we can see that is not the case.
The new Brutale 800 signals an elevation of MV Agusta, from a brand with a shiny veneer and little beneath the surface, to a motorcycle company that can not only tug on the heartstrings of our moto-lust, but can also pique our more reasonable senses into seeing the substance beyond the glossy paint and subtle lines.
Quite simply put, the 2016 MV Agusta Brutale 800 is the best machine to come from Varese.
It’s a busy time in the Asphalt & Rubber office, with the entire motorcycle industry deciding that January/February is the perfect time to host events. As such, we should have a flurry of reviews, interviews, and other articles from these events posting to the site over the next few weeks.
For me, this starts two weeks on the road, with my first top near Malaga, Spain for the 2016 MV Agusta Brutale 800 launch – the day’s route see us riding the new Brutale 800 near the Mediterranean Sea today, putting about 150km on the bike.
Things are already off to an interesting start, as we woke up to a sizable earthquake, whose epicenter was just on the other side of the sea, 11km off the coast of Morocco. Hopefully that’s not a bad omen for my fellow riders, though for me it felt like being back in California.
Enough of all that, the purpose of this post is to field questions about the 2016 MV Agusta Brutale 800 from A&R readers, which I can answer in the comments section. If I don’t know an answer, I will try to get a response from the MV Agusta personnel that are here with me in Spain.
You can follow our thoughts on the bike live via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also try searching for the hashtags: #Brutale800 for the thoughts of our colleagues as well.
Another tasty item from the 2016 Motor Bike Expo in Verona, the Motul Onirika 2853 concept builds upon a different Italian sport bike, the MV Agusta Brutale 800.
Commissioned by the Italian arm of the French lubricant manufacturer Motul, the Motul Onirika 2853 was designed and built by Luca Pozzato at Officine GPDesign.
The name “Onirika 2853” takes some deciphering, as it refers to dreaming or imagining of what the Motul brand will look like a millennia after the company’s founding (1853). At least, that’s how Motul explains it…we will have to take their word for it.
Ducati is at this year’s Motor Bike Expo in Verona, and it has a bevy of concepts and customs it wants to show the world. The Italian brand’s trio of Sixty2 Scrambler concepts didn’t really spark our engine, but the Ducati draXter Concept is certainly of note and worthy of further scrutiny.
The Ducati XDiavel was Bologna’s big reveal at EICMA this year, and while the cruiser model wasn’t our cup of tea, we might have to change our tune with this decked-out version of the machine.
Ducati says that the draXter model interprets the XDiavel from a “sports” point-of-view, and the modifications made to the machine certainly do a good job of connoting a bike that leaps from the line.