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Honda is teasing a big global unveiling later next month. What it is, no one knows – outside of Honda, of course. To help tease us into the debut though, Honda has set up a five-part video series, with the tagline “What Lies Beyond” and a focus on what brings motorcycles to the open road.

We have a little over a month to speculate about what new big 2018 model Honda has up its sleeve for us. Maybe it’s a production version of the Honda Neowing hybrid three-wheeler. Maybe it’s the electric version of the Honda Super Cub

Or maybe, it’s an all-new Honda Gold Wing, which is what my colleagure Adam Waheed from Riders Domain thinks it could be. Either way, we’ll see soon enough. Hopefully it wheelies, and comes in red.

No, the beard and skinny jeans crowd aren’t abandoning their broken down Honda CB’s and flocking to the crazy looks of the Kawasaki Z900, but Team Green does seem to have a heritage-inspired version of their four-cylinder street bike coming down the pipe.

Teasing the Kawasaki Z900RS in a short YouTube video, it seems that the Japanese brand is taking the stout Z900 and styling it for the mercurial tastes of younger riders.

This could be an interesting move for Kawasaki, and while the Z900 isn’t the bike that immediately comes to our minds as being appropriate for this venture, one has to remember the success that Yamaha has seen doing a similar maneuver with the FZ-09, turning it into the XSR900.

Using motorcycle designs as platforms for multiple machines is nothing new, but we have seen the Japanese brands using this strategy with growing success each year.

As such, the upcoming Kawasaki Z900RS could be a very intriguing machine to see, once it drops. Stay tuned.

In case you missed it, the Ducati Desmosedici Stradale engine debuted today at Misano. The 1,103cc 90° V4 engine with desmodromic valves makes 210hp and 88.5 lbs•ft of torque.

One of the core elements of the Desmosedici Stradale engine is its 70° crank pin offset, which creates a “Twin Pulse” firing order (0-90-290-380), which should make the road-going engine behave similar to a v-twin engine.

We don’t have to speculate too much though, as Ducati has a video of the Desmosedici Stradale bench testing a simulated run of the Panigale V4 around Mugello. Enjoy!

In less than a week’s time, we will get all the details about Ducati’s new V4 engine, named the Desmosedici Stradale, but details about Ducati’s V4 superbike model continue to come in as well.

Today, we have another video of the V4 superbike testing. This time, the venue appears to be Mugello, and the video quality is high enough that we can clearly see that the machine in question is the V4 superbike in its testing garb.

Our Belgian friends at MaxxMoto continue to have the pulse on the upcoming Ducati V4 Superbike, posting today what appears to be th first sounds of the four-cylinder machine as it’s being ridden around a test track.

The sound of the V4 engine can be clearly distinguished from that of Ducati’s v-twin platform, with the bike sounding very similar to the Aprilia RSV4 – a nod that Ducati will be using a “big bang” or “long bang” cylinder firing order, rather than a “screamer” or “twin pulse” arrangement.

We do know that Ducati’s V4 will be a hybrid design of Superquadro and Desmosedici engine designs, and it will of course feature desmodromic valve technology

We expect to get more details about the V4 superbike’s engine technology at a media event in two weeks’ time (the Thursday before the San Marino GP at the Misano World Circuit), and of course we expect the bike itself to debut at this year’s EICMA show in Milan, Italy.

Until then, keep checking back to Asphalt & Rubber for the latest news on Ducati’s V4 superbike project.

If you are one of those motorcycle enthusiasts that longs for the days back when men were men, and bikes were carbureted, then vintage endurance racing at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps should be right up your alley.

Throw in a superb-looking Katana race bike, with Guy Martin at the helm, and well…you’ve got some YouTube gold right there, that’s what you’ve got.

Such is the case with Suzuki and its Team Classic Suzuki Racing squad, which came out to Belgium for the second round of the European Classic Endurance Championship, at the Spa Four-Hour endurance race.

There are so many iconic names at play here, it’s amazing that the event didn’t get more coverage. Thankfully, Suzuki made a video to help share the experience, which we think you will find highly enjoyable.

Yamaha Motor Europe has begun its teaser campaign for what we expect to be a new adventure bike in the company’s lineup.

Debuting the Yamaha T7 Concept at the 2016 EIMCA Show, the 689cc, twin-cylinder, ADV motorcycle is the prime suspect for the unseen motorcycle in this teaser video.

Yamaha hasn’t been bashful about the T7 Concept either, with prototype versions of the bike being caught out testing, and even loaned out the bike for a special photo shoot with Italian publication DueRoute.

Even in Milan, it was widely known that the concept on stage would be headed into production. So, here we are.

If you happen already to own one of the 2017 Ducati 1299 Panigale models, including the recently released Ducati 1299 Panigale R Final Edition and Ducati 1299 Superleggera models, then you already have the latest and greatest electronics suite from the Italian manufacturer, dubbed the Ducati Traction Control EVO (DTC EVO).

But, if you own a 2015 or 2016 Panigale, whether it be a “base” model or “S” model, you have been out of luck when it comes to taking full advantage of your bike’s Bosch inertial measurement unit (IMU)…until today.

Ducati is announcing that it will retrofit its DTC EVO system for older 1299 Panigale machines, so they can take advantage of IMU’s ability to manage sliding the rear wheel, via a revised algorithm.

The old adage in racing is that you get slower once you have a child. Being from Australia and all, I don’t think our friend Rennie Scaysbrook (of Cycle News fame) got that memo.

Just days before he would head off to Colorado for the 95th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, Rennie and his wife Annabelle gave birth to their first child, Harvey James Scaysbrook.

Having just joined the noble ranks of fatherhood, it would be a short introduction, as Rennie would have to leave Baby Harvey right away and compete in the 95th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

For his work on the mountain, Rennie joined an exclusive club of a different kind, posting a solid 9:57.712 time on his 2017 KTM 1290 Super Duke R – thus becoming one of just a few motorcyclists who have broken the 10-minute barrier at the Race to the Clouds.

With that time, Rennie was the second-fastest man on a motorcycle at Pikes Peak this year *cough* first loser! *cough*, as his teammate and Pikes Peak rookie, Chris Fillmore, would go on to break the standing motorcycle record with an even more impressive 9:49.625 time.

We already showed you Fillmore’s lap, but we think Rennie’s give a better perspective of what it is like to race up the 156 turns of Pikes Peak.

As an aside, we were pretty stoked to see Rennie break the 10-minute mark at Pikes Peak this year, and of course the A&R team gives a big congratulations to the Scaysbrooks for their bouncing baby boy. Let’s hope he gets his racing skills from Dad, but his looks from Mom!

Want to watch the fastest motorcycle run ever up Pikes Peak? At this year’s Race to the Clouds, Chris Fillmore took his KTM 1290 Super Duke R on a record-setting ascent to the mountain summit, with an impressive time of 9:49.625.

More impressive though is the fact the Fillmore broke the record on his rookie debut to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

If you have less than ten minutes to spare, you can watch Chris Fillmore’s run up the mountain. It’s extra enjoyable, because the Pikes Peak organizers thought that the first three minutes of the video should include a voice-over interview with Fillmore at the mountain’s summit, rather than letting us listen to that KTM purr.

With five podium-finishes at this year’s Isle of Man TT, Peter Hickman is the man to watch in future TT fortnights, as the 30-year-old is showing tremendous talent and progress with his racing.

Helping Hickman to those finishes in the superbike classes (Superbike TT, Superstock TT, and Senior TT) was the BMW HP4, the Bavarian brand’s carbon-fiber-everything liter-bike that was just unveiled earlier this year.

A talented rider, an amazing machine, and one of the most iconic race tracks in the world? That sounds like the recipe for an epic onboard video.

Grab a stopwatch before you click play though, and see how much time Hickman’s front wheel spends in the air. It’s impressive.