The folks at Kawasaki are really enjoying their 2015 World Superbike Championship victory – and honestly, can you blame them? Jonathan Rea lit up the WSBK field, and dominated the series on his Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R race bike.
For 2016, you can already get the race-inspired Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R KRT Edition, but for our European riding brethren, another model might tickle your fancy. Behold, the 2016 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R “Winter Test Edition” street bike.
The Aprilia Factory Works program is easily the most ridiculously awesome thing to come out of the 2015 EICMA show because it offers regular consumers (with a healthy pocketbook) the chance to own a 230hp+ Aprilia RSV4 superbike, just like what they race in the World Superbike Championship…and very close to what they race in MotoGP
Aprilia was a little vague though on what the Factory Works program entailed, but thankfully today at the EICMA show they clarified what exactly would be available from Aprilia Racing.
Coming up with five trim-levels for the RSV4 superbike, Aprilia has basically answered every track day enthusiast’s / amateur racer’s wet dream, and distracted us from the fact that the Noale company has a woefully aging product lineup.
However, this news is certainly less about a motorcycles with ridiculous horsepower figures, and more about a proven racing division opening up its service to a broader range of clientele.
Nicky Hayden is back to work this week, testing his new WSBK-spec Honda CBR1000RR race bike at the Motorland Aragon race track. An important day for the Kentucky Kid, the weather unfortunately didn’t get the memo and thus didn’t cooperate – heavy fog engulfed the track, along with very cold temperatures.
As such, Hayden didn’t get much time on the Honda CBR1000RR, riding only a handful of laps during the test – mostly fulfilling team media obligations and getting the Honda’s basic setup to his liking.
Hayden will have a second opportunity to test the Honda CBR1000RR at Aragon on Tuesday, and later this week he will appear at the EICMA trade show in Milan, Italy.
If you want an advance preview to Hayden’s appearance, Honda Pro Racing has put together a nice video interview with the former MotoGP champion. Check it out, after the jump.
Bimota has a history of providing do-it-yourself kits to customers, allowing racers and owners the ability to use their own engines with Bimota chassis. And now, you can do that with the Bimota BB3, as the boutique brand is offering its BMW S1000RR powered superbike in kit form.
All you need to provide is the 1,000cc inline-four engine from the S1000RR, as well as its wiring and electronics, and the Bimota BB3 kit provides the rest.
While the package should be an affordable way for collectors, enthusiasts, and racers to come about owning a Bimota BB3, the kits genesis is very much grounded from adversity in the business realm.
Aprilia has just dropped a shocker on us, saying that the 2016 Aprilia RSV4 RF superbike will have over 230hp. From what we can tell, there’s a slight catch to this huge horsepower claim, you have to have the bike built by the company’s new Aprilia Factory Works Project.
This means that the real story is that Aprilia is making available its racing department’s service, meaning you can buy a WSBK-spec or WSTK-spec Aprilia RSV4 RF, that comes with different chassis, electronics, and engine options.
The most lurid of options, of course, is a 230hp figure.
The 2016 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R might just be an “update” to the WSBK Championship winning superbike, but Team Green has put enough new tech and features into the machine to get us pretty excited about its debut.
Boasting a revised chassis and motor, more electronics, more aerodynamic fairings, Kawasaki not only surprised us, and the rest of the motorcycle media, with its the midlife model refresh, but we think Kawasaki surprised even themselves with the machine, making a bike that potential-R1 buyers will definitely have to consider when they make a trip down to their local dealership.
Team Green has changed so much on the 2016 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R that we will let them list all the changes in the video, after the jump. If you can get past the techno music and hyperbole, it is actually pretty interesting.
The long-awaited Episode 5 of the Two Enthusiasts Podcast is now up for your listening pleasure. Apologies for it taking so long, but I had to celebrate another rotation around the sun, which sort of got in the way of editing the show this past weekend.
We think you’ll find this episode worth the wait though, and I personally think it’s our best show yet (there’s only five of them though, so I guess that statement has a fairly low bar to beat).
In the show we talk about the Yamaha R1S, the new Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R, vehicle-to-vehicle communications, Nicky Hayden going to World Superbike, riding the Aprilia RSV4 RR, and trying out the new Icon Airframe Pro Carbon helmet.
You can listen to the show via the embedded SoundCloud player, after the jump, or you can find the show on iTunes (please leave a review) or this RSS feed. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well. Cheers!
Since Forward Racing boss Giovanni Cuzari was arrested on charges of corruption, money laundering and tax evasion earlier this year, the team’s places in MotoGP have been in jeopardy. Yamaha immediately stopped its support for the team, meaning that Forward did not have bikes for the 2016 MotoGP season.
After his release from arrest, and, according to his lawyer, the dropping of the charges of corruption, Cuzari was confident he would be allowed back on to the MotoGP grid, and was in talks with both Aprilia and Ducati for the supply of bikes. His fate, Cuzari told us at Misano, was in the hands of Carmelo Ezpeleta.
The head of Dorna appears to have decided that Forward Racing’s future does not lie in the premier class, at least for the foreseeable future. Today, Forward Racing announced they will not be racing in MotoGP, but will be turning their focus towards the World Superbike championship.
Forward will be working with MV Agusta to assist with their World Superbike and World Supersport efforts from 2016. Cuzari has been appointed Team Principal for the team, and given responsibility for MV Agusta’s racing department.
This is not Forward Racing taking over the running of the MV Agusta team, however, according to dedicated WSBK journalist Marien Cahuzak.
Has Valentino Rossi finally mastered qualifying? The Italian has struggled since the format changed, from the extended hour of qualifying which started out as free practice and ended up as an all-out time attack, to the frenetic fifteen-minute dash for pole.
His biggest problem, he always explained, was getting up to speed from the start: leaving pit lane and going flat out from the very first meters. He had spent a lifetime slowly sidling up to a blistering lap, rather than getting the hammer down as soon as the lights changed.
The switch from an analog to a binary format had been hard to swallow. Millions of older fans sympathized, as they faced the same struggle in their own lives.
Lorenzo, on the other hand, has thrived in the new format, having learned the skill while doing battle with Casey Stoner. The Australian’s greatest legacy was his ability to go as fast as possible the moment he left the pit lane.
I was once told by Cristian Gabarrini, Stoner’s crew chief, that when they looked at his sector times, they would see that he had set his fastest sector times on his out lap. To beat Stoner, Lorenzo had to learn to emulate him.
It’s only Friday, but already, one championship has been decided. Tito Rabat’s mission to outscore Johann Zarco was tough enough before he crashed at Almeria and broke his wrist, but trying to handle the immense braking stresses of the Japanese circuit with a freshly plated radius proved too much to ask.
Rabat’s attempt was brave, but ultimately doomed to failure. After riding in FP1, Rabat realized that it wasn’t so much the pain, but rather a lack of strength in the arm needed to control the bike safely. Forced to withdraw, Rabat’s title defense came to an end, and Johann Zarco became the 2015 Moto2 World Champion.
It was a rather bewildered Zarco who faced the press later on Friday. His mind was still focused on Sunday’s race, rather than on becoming champion. He could barely comprehend that he had already won the title.
Mentally, he had prepared to celebrate on Sunday, after the race, so the title had come unexpectedly early. It did not put him off his stride, however. Zarco was twelve thousandths slower than Tom Luthi in FP1, and nineteen thousandths faster than Alex Rins in FP2. He remains the man to beat in Moto2, exactly as he has been all year.
The 2016 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R is a pretty big “refresh” for the WSBK-winning superbike, much more so than we expected. With a revised engine, chassis, and electronics suite (including the addition of an IMU), it’s probably easier to list what hasn’t changed, than what has.
Of course, Kawasaki is trying to stay as competitive in the marketplace as it is on the race track, and the latest 10R finds a happy medium in that pursuit with the limited.
Coming with all the updates on the base model, the KRT Edition adds what you would expect: race-team inspired graphics. We would use the pejorative “bold new graphics” statement here, but it actually applies…in a positive way.
For $300 extra on top of the 2016 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R’s $16,000 price tag, we can see a few WSBK enthusiasts opting for the premium paint job. Just in case you happen to be one of those people, we have a bevy of high-resolution photos for your viewing pleasure.