Tag

video

Browsing

Every year Valentino Rossi competes in the Monza Rally Show in Italy, and The Doctor does quite well for himself at the event — he was the winner of the rally at last year’s event. For 2014, Rossi found himself on the podium once again, scoring a second place finish with his VR46 team and Carlo Cassina as his co-driver.

Rossi & Co. were bested by WRC’s Dani Sordo and his rally-spec Citroen, though to be fair, Rossi himself had a works Ford at his disposal. Perhaps too many wheels, the event is a fun end to The Doctor’s racing season, as the nine-time World Champion enjoys competition in a variety of forms. For those wondering, Uccio finished ninth.

“For me this is one of the highlights of the year – I get to race against my friends and there is very little pressure to perform,” said Rossi. “It is a shame that I didn’t get the overall wins today but I’m proud of four stage wins which is incredible for me. And I get to see all of the fans from rally and MotoGP which is great.  I’m coming back next year!”

While the off-road community continues to morn the loss of American Kurt Caselli, preparations are underway for each year’s big event, the Dakar Rally. At the center of that attention is Cyril Despres, who made the shock move from KTM to Yamaha’s rally team.

Riding alongside Olivier Pain, Frans Verhoeven, and Michael Metge in the 2014 Dakar Rally, all eyes will be on the Frenchman Despres, and whether he can continue his rivalry with Spaniard Marc Coma, despite now being on different machinery (and contending with KTM’s all-new rally bike).

Taking a break from filming duties for Yamaha Racing, Despres had a moment to talk about his switch to Yamaha, his first impressions of the Yamaha 450 Rally race bike, and the upcoming Dakar Rally.

Despres’ comments, as usual, are fairly candid, and the five-time Dakar winner tells a good story about how Stéphane Peterhansel (a six-time Dakar winner himself) persuaded him to try the race on a different machine — a Yamaha, the same make Peterhansel campaigned his victories upon not so long ago.

Last week when Yamaha debuted its electric street bike concept, the Yamaha PES1, we thought it looked like a well-though out concept machine that gave the tuning fork brand some street cred for thinking about a future with electric motorcycles. After all, the Japanese company was light on details, and certain parts of the bike seemed a bit more Star Trek than reality. Turns out we were wrong.

Releasing a video of the Yamaha PES1 testing on the track, it’s clear that the concept is fully-functional (just like Data), which means Yamaha has set its phasers to stun with this 100kg machine. From the cuts of this quick YouTube flick, Yamaha seems as serious as a Borg cube with its electric project, which only adds to the intrigue on when they could debut a proper production model.

Maybe with the rumors about Honda being behind the Mugen Shinden project, Yamaha didn’t want Big Red to get too far ahead in the EV game. Whatever the case may be, we like it…even more than Klingon gagh.

Feeling the pressure to develop a 250cc sport bike for developing markets, Yamaha has finally released some details on the upcoming Yamaha R25, and we like what we see so far. A two-cylinder machine with racing in its blood, Yamaha’s concept is like a mini Yamaha YZR-M1 — devoid of lights and mirrors — and features racing livery with an Akrapovic exhaust to match.

The Yamaha R25 concept is an encouraging sign from Yamaha, even if what we are looking is a concept bike rather than a production-ready model.

But still, Yamaha’s approach in styling the Yamaha R25 to visually look like a miniature M1 is going to payoff huge dividends in Southeast Asia, where the bulk of the models are going to be sold, and where Rossi and Lorenzo have massive droves of fans. For us in the western world, well this bike just looks hot. We want one already.

What? You mean the 2013 Macau GP wasn’t on your television, despite the fact you get like a billion channels nowadays? And one flying-lap is simply not enough to ease your motolust?

Don’t worry, if you missed the road racing action this weekend in China’s Special Administrative Region, we’ve got your back. Someone in China has broken the Great Firewall, and uploaded the race to YouTube.

The racing is fierce on this nearly four-mile long circuit, and the fairytale ending is worth the price of admission alone. Enjoy over an hour of racing coverage.

The Macau GP is just nuts, let’s just get that thought out and up front. A proper road race on, you know, the road…it boggles the mind to think that competitors at Macau share the circuit’s near four-mile course length with each other, unlike the Isle of Man TT’s single-rider time trial format.

This of course means riders are angling for apexes with each other, all the while there is virtually no run-off to be seen. No margin for error, triple-digit speeds, and 200+ horsepower machines — like we said, the Macau GP is just nuts.

Don’t just take our word for it, have a look for yourself with this excellent on-board footage from eighth-place finisher Didier Grams and his gyros-stablized camera. It’s epic to watch the armco go flying by while this talented German rider does his thing.

You may remember the well-done short film that Yamaha Racing put together recently about Kazutoshi Seki, the man behind the electronics of Valentino Rossi’s MotoGP race bike, and how great of a job Yamaha did in portraying someone in the MotoGP paddock that you likely have never heard of, but whose contributions are so vital to what happens on the race track every weekend.

Well today we bring you an earlier installment of Yamaha’s “Moving You” series, from which that video came from, and which instead focuses on the Yamaha Riding Academy (YRA) and its Chief Instructor Hidenobu “Concorde” Toh.

A film about the work that Yamaha does beyond just selling motorcycles, it highlights the fact that YRA primarily deals with police forces around the world, and that Toh-san is responsible for teaching the motorcycle officers both basic and advanced riding techniques, which will serve them in the line of duty, and could make the difference between life and death.

As the video explains, this is a high-stakes training effort, as many of the countries involved use officers on motorcycles for their most dangerous assignments. In that regard, Toh-san and his instructors are tasked with giving these officers the tools they need to not only perform their jobs, but to also come home safe from assignment.

Like its MotoGP counterpart, it is well-told story that focuses on the work of one individual, and how that person contributes to a larger effort. It also happens to be a great eleven-minute distraction from your weekend, which we think you will enjoy.

Judging from how the KTM 1290 Super Duke R stacks up against its competition (like the Aprilia Tuono V4 R APRC ABS, BMW S1000R, and Ducati Monster 1200 S), the Austrian’s were right in calling the new Duke “The Beast” in their pre-launch marketing.

With 180hp coming from its 1,301cc v-twin engine, and 106 lbs•ft of torque (74 of which start at just 2,500 rpm), KTM has built a road-eating monster in the new Super Duke R.

Taming that beast is no easy task, though luckily the KTM 1290 Super Duke R is one of the Austrian company’s first motorcycles to get traction control. But as our friend Iwan learned at the international press launch in Spain, the Super Duke R still packs quite the punch.

KTM’s tame motorcycle racer, and development rider for the Super Duke R, Jeremy McWilliams was on-hand for the press launch as well. Unfortunately for McWilliams though, there appears to be something wrong with his race-spec Duke, as the front wheel has trouble staying attached to the ground. He should probably have the boys take a look at it.

As a member of the Nintendo-generation, nothing tickles my fancy more than to see an homage to some of the classics, and for motorcyclists is there any title more prolific than Excitebike? I think not. So it warms my gamer hearts to see that Red Bull has explored the idea of a real-life Excitebike course with its “straight rhythm” project.

Red Bull says that the course is “an innovative evolution of supercross where a track is ‘unwound’ — there are no turns, just a half-mile-long straight rhythm section. By isolating the whoops, triples, doubles, table tops and step on/offs, riders must focus exclusively on reading the terrain directly in front of them, correctly judging their speed for precise distance and control.”

To us, it looks like the energy drink company is hoping to make the Red Bull Straight Rhythm a new type of racing spectacle, and is using names like James Stewart, Ryan Dungey, Marvin Musquin, Jessy Nelson, Cole Seely, and Justin Bogle to hock the new course format. Check it out after the jump, and be sure to pick who you are rooting for before they get started.

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a post that compared two sets of photos that had been done by Portland, Oregon Ducati dealership MotoCorsa. The first set was called “seDUCATIve” and featured a model name Kylie and the Ducati 1199 Panigale — you can imagine what those photos looked like.

MotoCorsa did something interesting with its second set of photos though, which were titled “MANigale”. Featuring male mechanics from the dealership, these good-humored lads recreated Kylie’s poses with the Panigale, complete with heels, tube tops, and booty shorts. It was good fun, and since I have a personal vendetta with the “girl on a bike” trope of motorcycle marketing, it made for good commentary as well.

The seDUCATIve vs. MANigale article was a fairly popular story on Asphalt & Rubber, it had its couple days of fame, and that was that — or so I thought. For the past month now, the MANigale story has been hitting various more mainstream outlets worldwide — much to my surprise, but also delight.