After a crashin during a practice session at Brands Hatch re-injured Neil Hodgson’s shoulder, the former WSBK (2003) and BSB (2000) Champion announced his retirement from racing today in a press release. In his crash, Hodgson injured his shoulder, which had been previously injured during a motocross training accident (road racers after cross-train in the dirt) here in the US. After undergoing testing on the shoulder for the past three weeks, it’s become clear that the injury will require Hodgson to retire from racing after a 20 year career.
We here in the United States have a hard enough time dealing with the antics of the Batman and Robin duo that is DMG and the AMA, but our Canadian brothers to the north have their own issues to deal with as well. In a surprising announcement, Canadian Superbike Championship has announced that it has banned the the entire 2010 Yamaha line from racing in its various series, while any year Yamaha YZF-R1 has been banned from the Canadian Pro Superbike class. More after the jump.
According to Italian website Motosprint, Stiggy Racing will be trading in it’s Honda CBR1000RR’s next year for a pair of shiny new Yamaha R1’s. This surprising manufacture swap seems to center around the financial issues Yamaha (and the rest of the motorcycle industry) is facing with cut backs in racing, and will add a second “supported” Yamaha team to the WSBK series in 2010.
With the pressure to buy a KTM RC8 up’d by , it got us thinking what else we’ll need to ask Santa to get us for Christmas, a brand new 2009 Yamaha R1 wouldn’t be half bad, especially after watching this new video the tuning-fork brand released. Continue reading to watch the video, and see great wallpaper fodder of the R1
Max Biaggi, Ben Spies, and Tom Sykes have graced us with some sounds of the new Yamaha R1 (1000cc cross-plane engine) and Aprilia RSV4 (1000cc V4 engine) taking a few laps at the Portimao circuit in Portugal. Click the jump to see the two videos.