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WSBK: What Kind of Track Is The Chang Circuit in Thailand?

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The Chang International Circuit is an unknown for everyone in World Superbikes this weekend. A new track in a new country represents many challenges for the teams and the riders, as they try to figure the fastest way around it.

It is an unknown for fans, too, most of them only having seen the track layout map on the World Superbike website.

Fortunately, racing has already taken place at the Chang circuit. The Asian Road Racing Championship held a round at the track in November 2014, which included two races from the Supersport 600 class. On its YouTube channel, it also has the full races from every round of the series, including the races at Chang.

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MotoGP

Circuit of Wales Says It Has £120 Million of Conditional Funding in Place

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One of the greatest mysteries surrounding the Circuit of Wales is exactly where the funding for the project is due to come from.

The ambitious project to build a circuit in the Blaenau Gwent region of South Wales will need some £325 million to complete it entirely, with around £200 million to come from private investors, the rest to come from public funds.

Though the Circuit of Wales has had plenty of headlines, there has been little word of any private investors putting any actual money into the project. That seems set to change.

Michael Carrick, Chief Executive of the Heads of the Valleys Development Company, the company behind the Circuit of Wales project, told the BBC that they have already raised £120 million in private investment, leaving £80 million still to find for development to go ahead.

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MotoGP

Silverstone Confirmed To Host British GP in 2015 & 2016

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Within a day of the announcement that the British round of MotoGP would not be held at Donington Park comes confirmation that the race will be held at Silverstone.

The ending of the relationship between Donington and the Circuit of Wales meant that a replacement venue had to be found at short notice, and with only Silverstone currently capable of hosting a MotoGP round, the deal was quickly arranged.

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MotoGP

Silverstone to Host British GP after Donington Dust-Up?

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The British round of MotoGP will not this year take place at Donington Park. In a shock statement, Donington Park announced it was breaking off its partnership with the Circuit of Wales to host the British GP.

In the statement, Donington claimed that it had not received the funding promised to it by the Circuit of Wales, which was needed to perform the upgrades required for MotoGP.

With no money forthcoming, Donington had no choice but to break the contract, leaving the British round of MotoGP without a home, at least temporarily.

Reports on the Motorcycle News website suggest that Silverstone will host the British race instead, with senior staff from the circuit having spoken to Dorna in Barcelona last week.

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MotoGP

MotoGP Will Race in Austria, Starting in 2016?

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MotoGP looks set to head to Austria from 2016. Today, Red Bull co-founder Dieter Mateschitz and Dorna reached an agreement to host an Austrian round of the series at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg. The agreement is merely preliminary, and subject to the track gaining FIM homologating the track and granting it a license to stage a MotoGP race.

The Red Bull Ring – previously known as the A1 Ring, before being bought by Mateschitz – has been upgraded and this year hosted both a round of Formula 1 and a round of the Red Bull Air Race. It was also the scene of the last Austrian Grand Prix, held back in 1997. The race was dropped after that year due to poor spectator attendance.

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Bikes

Watch the Kawasaki Ninja H2R Rip It Up on the Track

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We will be talking about the Kawasaki Ninja H2R for quite a while we suspect, even well after the dust has settled on the hyperbike’s launch. A supercharged 300hp track-only macine doesn’t come from one of the Japanese Four too often (read: ever), and what it means for the industry is still being assessed by pundits and enthusiasts alike.

For now, it has our ADD-like attention, just as Kawasaki begins teasing out its 200hp Ninja H2 street bike. So while we wait for the H2 to drop, here’s a video of the H2R doing its thing around the race track. For those of you wondering how 300hp is going to hook up in the tight and twisty, here is your answer.

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Products

TrakTape – Track Riders, You’ll Want to See This

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I’ve been riding track days for almost as long as I’ve owned a motorcycle. It’s something that goes hand-in-hand with my motorcycle experience, and probably is the reason why Asphalt & Rubber has such a sport bike / racing slant when it comes to our story-mix. So, I know all too well the trials and tribulations of taping up a bike before heading to the track.

Some track groups don’t require tape, as long as you pull the fuses to your headlight, tail light, and turn signals. Some track groups recognize that the plastic used on these lighting systems is brittle, can easily shatter, and thus need some tape over them for the unthinkable. Regardless, I guarantee that if you do enough track days with anything but a dedicated track bike, you will learn the hassle of taping a headlight at some point in time.

When it comes time to doing this right of passage, there are two schools of thought: 1) duck it and fuck it, and 2) razor blade artistry. The prior involves just slapping tape (usually horrid blue masking tape) in one easy but sloppy job, while the latter means painstakingly applying perfectly measured strips of matte black gaffer tape, and then trimming the excess with a razor blade. One theory is quick and easy, while the other can mean attractive track photos, but hours of your life lost.

That’s not the case anymore though, dear track day enthusiasts. Straight from the department of “now why didn’t I think of that” we bring you the miracle of TrakTape. Pre-cut model-specific adhesive covers for your headlight, tail light, and signals, TrakTape makes getting your bike onto the track a snap, and looks aces in the process.

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MotoGP

MotoGP: Donington Park Will Host British GP in 2015

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Donington Park is to host the British round of MotoGP in 2015. The Leicestershire circuit has reached agreement with the Circuit of Wales to host the British Grand Prix while the Welsh track is being built.

The Circuit of Wales was in talks with both Donington, which hosted the British Grand Prix from 1987 until 2009, and Silverstone, which hosted the race from 2010 until this year, but agreed more favorable terms with Donington.

The deal is a little more complicated than most contracts with racetracks. Dorna has a contract with the Circuit of Wales to host the race for the next five years, but the Circuit of Wales is yet to be built. Construction on the ambitious project has yet to be started, and the project is still a long way short of the money it needs for completion.

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MotoGP

Video: Take a Lap Around Autódromo Termas de Río Hondo

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This weekend marks the return of Grand Prix Motorcycle racing to the South American continent, and the MotoGP paddock is slowly making its long and arduous journey to the Autódromo Termas de Río Hondo.

Revamped in 2012, the MotoGP Championship had to pushback its 2013 plans, amid construction concerns and issues with a certain petroleum company having a beef with the Argentinean government.

That being said, MotoGP machines are in Argentina now (we hope), and will be on the circuit come Friday. We’ve already introduced to you the design of the Termas de Río Hondo circuit, now take a lap around the nearly three-mile circuit with former Grand Prix Champion Franco Uncini.

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MotoGP

Introducing the Termas De Rio Hondo Circuit of Argentina

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The Argentinian round of MotoGP will be the first time a major racing series has visited the Termas de Rio Hondo, the brand new circuit in northern Argentina. As the track is still so new, the circuit designers – Dromo Racetrack Design from Italy – have produced some background material containing key facts about the circuit.

Alongside the list of facts, there are also a couple of interesting infographics giving a better idea of what the track is like. There is a track map showing the elevation change on the circuit. But most interesting of all, is the map created using simulation software to estimate which corner will be taken in which gear, and what speeds will be reached.

As a primer to getting an idea of what to expect this weekend, these infographics are great place to start. Action starts in Argentina on Thursday.

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News

Nürburgring Sold to German Development Group

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After three years of uncertainty, the Nürburgring has finally been sold, and not to an American investment group as had been rumored, but instead to a German real estate development group: Capricorn Development.

Capricorn is said to have paid €77 million for the iconic race course and its surrounding facilities, with the Düsseldorf-based firm promising to pump another €25 million into the property once they take full-ownership of it on January 1, 2015.

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