I have had to zip my lips for far too long about this project, but A&R can finally tell you about On Any Sunday, The Next Chapter – the sequel to the famous documentary of a similar name.
A project by Dana Brown, the son of Bruce Brown, the man who filmed the original On Any Sunday, this next installment follows a variety of amateur and professional racers and enthusiasts, from a broad-spectrum of two-wheeled disciplines.
We honestly thought the whole American Chopper / Paul Sr. vs. Paul Jr / Orange County Choppers thing had finally run its course. OCC Merchandising filed for bankruptcy protection, American Chopper was unable to find a new cast to work with Paul Sr., and Paul Jr was off in his own shop of obscurity. In other words, order had been restored to the universe. Not. So. Fast.
It seems the folks at Blizzard Entertainment want a piece of the OCC action, and it’s coming to us in a new direct-to-web video series: Azeroth Choppers. The premise is pretty simple: two design teams will build two bikes that fit the “Alliance vs. Horde’ motif in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
WoW gamers will then later get to vote on which bike gets digitized and made available for play. And, Paul Teutul Jr. is charge of the whole build process. We could not make this up if we tried.
On that fateful day during the Baja 1000, Kurt Caselli’s life was ended far too early. At thirty-years-old and still riding an upward trajectory with his career, Caselli had already amassed an impressive resumé of race wins, and had just been announced as the newest rider KTM Racing’s Dakar Rally factory team for 2014.
While it is easy to talk about his off-road accomplishments, the thing we hear the most, from the people that knew him best, was Kurt’s amazing personality. He was the very best at what he did, and also one of the very best doing it.
It is touching then to see that the short video “Caselli 66 – Ride The Dream” has been produced to honor our lost racer. For those that didn’t know Kurt, it is a great introduction into his amazing life, on and off the race track. And for those he was close to, the video serves as an excellent vehicle in which to remember those better times.
After the jump is the 30-minute-ish film, but be sure to grab some tissues before you hit play. It’s powerful stuff.
The Endurance World Championship season is about to start, with the 2014 Bol d’Or 24-Hour race kicking off in just a few hours in Magny-Cours. But woe is you, you have no way of watching the race, right? Pssh…Asphalt & Rubber has you covered, my endurance loving friend.
Well actually, the FIM does…we are just making things putting-on-pants-easy for you in terms of watching the live stream and timing on your computer box. Sit back, relax, and watch 24-hours of motorcycle racing goodness from the comfort of your monitor’s warm glow. Go ahead, take your shoes off. We won’t mind. Racing starts 6am Pacific time, 9am Eastern.
I got a bit fired up yesterday while I was talking about the spectator zones that will be put into place for the 2014 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and I got a bit of flak for calling it “the world’s most unprofessionally run international motorsport event.” It is, full stop.
The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is about to host its 92nd running, and in the almost hundred years of competition, the Race to Clouds has failed to move beyond its folksy roots.
Don’t get me wrong, I love this race. It’s a great historic event, which actually gets more coverage abroad than it does in the United States. But, it has some serious growing to do from a safety, media, coverage, and promotional point-of-view.
Implementing new rules for the 2014, as to where spectators can view the race, is a huge step forward for Pikes Peak, and the following video is a great example why some modicum of professional organization needs to be brought to this race.
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.
Suzuki’s MotoGP test team took advantage of the presence of the MotoGP paddock at Austin to plan a test directly after the Grand Prix of the Americas.
Under the watchful eye of team manager Davide Brivio, the team planned to have test rider Randy De Puniet put in three days of testing at a circuit, as the team had not yet tested the Suzuki XRH-1 at COTA, in a bid to gather more data ahead of their return to the series in 2015.
Unfortunately for Suzuki, very heavy hail and thunderstorms made testing extremely difficult on Monday, leaving the track very dirty and much slower than it had been for Sunday’s race. But testing resumed in earnest on Tuesday, with Randy De Puniet running through testing electronics and another back-to-back test of the two chassis options Suzuki has been working on.
Motorcycles are a good time out. If you are reading Asphalt & Rubber, then you already know this simple truth. So with such a basic offering, why do we struggle to bring more people into this sport?
We have already seen the FIM’s recent efforts to encourage and foster female road racers at the international level, but what are we doing at the domestic level?
How are we encouraging this sport and this industry to the other 50% of the American population, especially when we don’t have a robust female community that uses two-wheels for their urban commute?
Well recently one such answer to that question came in the form of the girls-only Girl’z MotoCamp put on by our friend Shelina Moreda.
An FIM and AMA Pro Racing rider, Moreda is no stranger to racing in a man’s world, and she is well aware of the limited number of entry points for ladies into motorcycling — you may have seen that she recently penned a story on A&R about teaching at the FIM girls camp in Spain, just a few months ago.
Towards the end of last year, I spent some time bumming around Italy, and one of my many stops was the Dainese headquarters in Vicenza, Italy. A company that is responsible for protecting many of the top motorcycle racers, as well as Yours Truly, Dainese is a company focused on safety, but this focus is really a bi-product of the Italian company’s thirst for competition.
Competition is of course about finding out who is the best, and at the pinnacle of that decision is finding out who is the Greatest of All Time, or G.O.A.T. And in motorcycle racing, when you think of the term “G.O.A.T.” two names come to mind: Giacomo Agostini and Valentino Rossi.
Motorcycle racing fans can debate well into the night as to which of these Italian racers is truly the greatest. Regardless who you pick though, both men are legends, and both men have been supported throughout their careers by Dainese.
That brings us back to my trip to Vicenza, because the battle between these two great riders continues, just not in the way you would suspect.
For those of you who are fans of the Stig, you may remember his infamous “Mean Mower” episode from Top Gear’s Speed Week 2013, as he blasted around the track on a lawn mower that sounded more like an Aston Martin than a two-stroke.
As comical as it was, that mower was producing 109hp, and had a 0-60 time of four seconds, all while retaining the ability to cut the grass and corners.
That Mean Mower is back and this time, and at the IDIADA proving ground in Tarragona, Spain, it broke a Guinness World Record.
Word from Italy is that Ducati has begun production on the Ducati 1199 Superleggera superbike, the Italian firm’s “Super Light” version of the Panigale. Crafted from copious amounts of magnesium, titanium, and carbon fiber, the Superleggera might be one of the few motorcycles that looks better naked without its fairings, rather than all buttoned up and ready for the race track.
Make no mistake, the Superleggera is an exercise of engineering prowess (it sports the highest power-to-weight ratio of any production motorcycle in history), so it makes sense then that the Superleggera is said to be the pet project of former Ducati engineer, and current Ducati CEO, Claudio Domenicali.
Creating a video to celebrate the commencement of Ducati’s production run on the Ducati 1199 Superleggera, it is no mistake then that Domenicali features heavily in it — this is one proud papa. Only 500 lucky Ducatisti will be able to share in that pride of ownership, as the Superleggera production will be extremely limited. What follows might be the closest you will ever get to one.