Innholdsfortegnelse for August 20, 2015 i Australian Motorcycle News

Tiger territory The telltale datalogger topbox – and the fact that this bike was spotted near the Triumph factory – tell us that the Tiger Sport is in line for changes ENGINEERS IN TRIUMPH’S R&D department must be overdue a holiday as the firm’s seemingly endless new model offensive is showing no sign of letting up. As well as the forthcoming new Bonneville range – which accounts for at least five separate models – and the heavily revised Speed Triple and Tiger Explorer that are due to appear in the near future, there are the planned 800cc versions of the Street Triple and Daytona. Now, the latest spy shots show that Triumph is putting the finishing touches on an updated Tiger Sport. The changes to the bike are largely intended…

IF YOU’RE AFTER a power cruiser that Darth Vader would be proud of then look no further than Triumph’s 2015 Thunderbird Nightstorm SE. Based on the Thunderbird Storm, the special edition takes darkness to a new level. Stripped of almost all of its chrome, the Nightstorm SE gets a custom ghost flame paint job using a two-tone combination of Phantom Black and Silver Frost paint schemes to create a subtle sparkle effect. To add to this menacing look, Triumph has blacked out the handlebar, gear lever, rear brake, footboards and mirrors. The twin-skinned full exhaust also gets the treatment with high-temperature resistant black paint. Triumph’s Thunderbird Nightstorm SE doesn’t just look the part, it surges forth like a storm, devouring rubber. The 1699cc parallel twin produces 156Nm of torque, the…

IN DETAIL What’s new on the 2015 BMW S1000RR 1. Sharper The latest S1000RR boasts 3 a steeper fork angle (to 23.5°) over its predecessor. This has reduced the trail (to 96.5mm) and as a result has quickened the steering. 2. Faster BMW has improved the gas flow through the engine, resulting in a healthy boost to both the top-end and mid-range. Peak power is claimed to be 146kW. 3. Lighter There’s better flowing gases at the rear end, too, with a lighter (and some may say less attractive) exhaust system. The new system is said to lose 3kg. 4. Brighter Major updates to the electronics have brought faster reaction times and a far more fluid feel to all rider-aid interventions. This is where the real magic happens. 2015 BMW…

THE KUBE LAPTOP case will fit a 15-inch computer and provides padding and an internal sleeve pocket. Combined with a bag and the phone pocket it makes a great carry-on combo for flights. Laptop case $42.00 Harness pocket $30.00 I’VE NEVER LIKED wearing a backpack on a motorcylcle. I’ll strap a bag to a pillion seat or snap on a tank bag over adding a weight to my body any day. But that all changed when a Kriega came into my life. All the things I don’t like about backpacks is diluted with a Kriega. It takes the weight off your shoulders with its clever Quadloc set and forget harness system. It’s pretty easy to adjust specifically to your size and shape and from then on it all happens with…

When Jorge gets it right, he gets it very right. And when he did exactly that at Brno, starting from pole and leading from the first corner to the last, the reward was the lead in the championship. He’s equal on points with Movistar Yamaha teammate Valentino Rossi, but this was Lorenzo’s fifth win of the year. Rossi has just three. The weather held clear for a massive crowd of almost 140,000 at the fine sweeping Czech Republic circuit, after a heavy overnight storm. It got so warm that Lorenzo started to worry about his tyre choice – the softer option front and rear. But the metronome kept ticking, and he kept reeling off the laps, breaking Marc Márquez’s determined pursuit by an eventual 4.4 seconds, and also breaking Repsol…

Glenn Allerton (YRT/Yamaha Motorcycle Insurance) has finally ignited the touch paper on his 2015 title assault with an almost faultless performance on his YZF-R1 at the fourth round of the Swann Insurance Australasian Superbike Championship at Queensland Raceway. His only hiccup in the second race which resulted in him and Yamaha teammate Wayne Maxwell being forced to start from pitlane. This denied Allerton a clean sweep of the weekend’s racing, but not the overall round win. Despite failing to trouble the frontrunners all weekend, Hone Team Racing’s Troy Herfoss (Team Honda Racing / Motologic) retained the lead in the title race over Maxwell, but only by three points with three rounds to run. Sunday morning delivered perfect racing conditions and the potential for the new lap record – a 1m08.830s…

RIDING AN AJS on a British ACU licence, it was South Australian Tim Gibbes who scored our first International Six Day Trial Gold Medal. And our second. And third. In fact Gibbes scored a total of six golds in the eurocentric contest long before the ISDT was first held “off shore” in the USA. Then Phil Lovett scored, along with Pele Granquist and many others – mostly paying their own expenses. Along came Cessnock MCC’s John Hall and the rest is history. Many individual medals followed, but sadly no Aussie Team wins. It was Australia’s Junior Team of Shawn Reed, Shane Watts, plus Ian and Jamie Cunningham that made the breakthrough back in 1995 only to be outdone by our Women’s Team in 2013 when Jess Gardiner, Tayla Jones and…

HOSTED BY THE Dungog MCC at the magnificent Monkerai complex, Rounds 11 and 12 of the Yamaha Australian Off Road Championships were held in the sprint format and despite a continuing late-season charge by CDR Yamaha’s Chris Hollis, who won Round 11 by six seconds over Toby Price on the Motorex KTM, it was Price who turned up the wick for Sunday’s Round 12. Having already won his fourth AORC title at Kyogle the fortnight before, second in Round 11 was all Price had needed to lock up the E3 Championship. It was game over. Yet with nothing to gain (and potentially much to lose) Price won all nine of Sunday’s Round 12 heats to accumulate over a minute on Yamaha Active8’s Josh Green, with Hollis in third. Green’s E1…

ASK ANYONE AROUND Australia who knows anything about road racing to name a domestic road racing series in Victoria, and the Hartwell, Pirelli Road Race Series and Vic titles are all names that will probably be mentioned. But there is another, less well-known series, created to help smaller clubs run their own events, and formatted perfectly for those less hardcore riders who only wish to commit to a single day’s racing rather than a whole weekend. It’s the Interclub or, to be technically correct, the Victorian Motorcycle Wreckers Interclub Road Racing Series, and it needs your support to continue doing what it has been doing for clubs for over 35 years. The history of the series is difficult to ascertain with real certainty due to a lack of written records,…

IMAGINE GOING FROM the 45 minutes plus one lap Hughie Hoare Memorial in the Pirelli Road Race Series at Broadford, Victoria to the Suzuka 8 Hour in Japan. Sounds unlikely doesn’t it? So imagine the delight for Victorian Rider Phil Czaj when his new sponsor, Nap’s Moto, gave the 4SR/Czaj Racing Team rider the opportunity to try out for a position with the Japanese Nanotop HMF team in the world-famous race. The trial took place in Japan in early June 2015 with the Nanotop HMF team setting clear goals for Phil to meet if he was to make the cut. “I had to achieve 2m18s and show that I could manage the tyres and the bike” he says. Given his lack of experience, a strange bike, (a Suzuki GSXR1000 instead…

IN THE RED EBR was founded in 2009 by engineering luminary Erik Buell. On 15 April 2015, the company filed for bankruptcy and closed its factory doors Plans to restart production of the Erik Buell Racing (EBR) range of V-twin-powered machines are already being drawn up just days after the remains of the firm were bought at a court-ordered auction. The company’s new owner, New Jersey-based businessman Bruce Belfer, is a longstanding Buell fan with a background in engineering and business. He bought the remains of the firm in the name of one of his companies, Atlantic Metals Group LLC, for around $3 million. The sale came just a week after EBR’s consultancy arm was sold to Hero for $3.8 million. The Indian firm had already spent around $34 million…

HOT ON THE heels of Honda’s Africa Twin adventure bike comes … an adventure scooter. There’s nothing new about blurring the lines between different styles of bikes, but the combination of scooter and adventure bike isn’t one we see often. Honda’s patent shows it has one in the works, either as a concept or a possible production model. The pictures reveal how the go-anywhere scooter may look, combining modern angular adventure-bike styling with a conventional scooter step-through design. It will also feature relatively large wheels shod with dual-sport rubber. The running gear is all off-the-shelf Honda kit, while the engine is the same 108cc, air-cooled single used in the Vision/Dio and the Zoomer X, which produces 6.14kW at 8000rpm. The fork looks to be from the Honda MSX125/Grom, as are…

AFTER TURNING ITS back on oily two-stroke motorcycle engines in 2007, Honda now appears to be paving the way for a two-stroke revival with plans to produce an emissions-friendly oil burner. Patents lodged by Honda reveal it is working on a direct injection two-stroke engine which could offer a burn that is clean enough to pass the new Euro 4 Emissions regulations. Although technological advances have extracted more power from modern four-stroke engines, when it comes to power-to-weight the four-stroke design still lags well behind the lightweight and powerful two-stroke engine. These simple units have been used to power everything from lawnmowers to 500cc GP racers. Unfortunately, the simple design comes at a cost: two-stroke engines love to spit out smoke and unburned fuel. That’s great if you love the…

IT WAS WITH the succinct reply above that 22-year-old Winifred Wells answered a journalist who wished to know what prompted her to undertake one of the most arduous and dangerous long-distance motorcycle rides in history. The daughter of a furniture manufacturer in Shenton Park, West Australia, Wells managed the solo ride from Perth to Sydney and back – 9000km – in 21 days, and this achievement was justly acclaimed as one of the greatest feats in the annals of Australian motorcycling. Her journey began on Boxing Day 1950, when she set out from Perth at noon having loaded her 350cc Royal Enfield Bullet with provisions and spare clothing in two pannier bags and a carrier-borne suitcase. In her pocket was £25, which was all that she allowed herself for her…

IT’S 30 YEARS since the original V-Max stormed showrooms with Yamaha moving more than 100,000 examples of the bike that defined two-wheel grunt. In 2008, the VMAX was re-launched, this time with 200 horses (149kW ) on offer from its all-new four-camshaft 16-valve 1679cc 65° V4 engine, and a humungous 166.8Nm of muscle. But the second generation VMAX didn’t meet sales expectations, nor did it become the blank canvas of customisation Yamaha had hoped. So it flicked one to Mr Custom himself, Roland Sands. “It’s pretty radical, but kind of lardy looking,” Sands said. “Since there wasn’t time or budget to make a new frame, we had to leave a lot of the stock stuff on. The idea was to strip it down and take what I call the wonkiness…

Since making the jump to the class of kings at the beginning of this year, Jack Miller has been on a steep learning curve. Along with some positive results and praise, he’s also had some disappointing DNFs and copped some flack from people who – although they might not say it straight out – think the leap from Moto3 is too much too soon. With Jack in Australia for the MotoGP summer break, we took the opportunity to catch up. How do you feel about the season so far? “There have been a lot of ups and downs, it’s been a rollercoaster year. I mean the first three races were good, I was really happy with Texas and Argentina. Then once we got to Europe things hit a tough point.…

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If the 2015 season is set for a cliff-hanger finale – and the law of averages suggests that it is – then the Indianapolis GP took us one step closer to the edge of the precipice. The iconic Brickyard laid on a feast of varied racing. A crowd of some 67,000 may have been dwarfed by the venue and punished by muggy, rainy weather, but they shared in three great races. Moto3 was completely bizarre, as rain came then went at the worst possible time; Moto2 was for once a mass front-running battle; and the MotoGP race was … well, iconic. Two pairs dominated, and the outcome of their battles could be decisive. It was a weekend of triumph for Marc Márquez, winning a second successive race, his fourth in…

The Moto2 race was everything it should be but seldom is: a big group fighting tooth and nail for the lead, right to the end. On pole was class rookie Álex Rins (Páginas Amarillas Kalex) for the second time this year, from title defender Tito Rabat (E-G VDS Kalex) and last year’s Indy winner Mika Kallio (Italtrans Kalex), in a rare return to form. Conditions were iffy, with the track still not completely dry, and bravery won out early as Malaysian Hafizh Syahrin (Petronas Kalex) pushed through from the fifth row of the grid to lead with Sam Lowes (Speed Up). After five laps both were still with the leading group, joined by points leader Johann Zarco (Ajo Kalex), Dominique Aegerter (Technomag Kalex), Rins, Azlan Shah (Idemitsu Kalex), Rabat and…

After the excitement of Indy, the middle class was back to normal at Brno – few changes of position up front and the podium exactly matching the grid front row. Zarco (Ajo Kalex) started from pole, and though it was Tito Rabat (E-G Marc VDS Kalex) who led through the first corners, and Thomas Lüthi (Derendinger Kalex) leading the first lap, the Frenchman immediately took over. Rabat followed him past on lap three, but a near high-side a little further round gave Zarco a lead of almost a second, and held it to the finish. “I was ready to fight if he came, but when the fuel load lightened, I could get a good rhythm,” he explained. Álex Rins (Páginas Amarillas) took fourth off Dominique Aegerter (Technomag Kalex) on lap…

VALENTINO ROSSI DARED to dream, but he has been delivered a brutal reality check by Yamaha teammate Jorge Lorenzo who is making a charge for the championship in the second half of the season. Rossi was a deflated figure at Brno, feeling the impact of the latest blow to his bold bid for an eighth MotoGP/500cc world title. Yamaha's star rider may be level on 211 points with seven races to go, but Lorenzo's assertion that the "championship now starts from zero" is a generous compliment. The Spaniard’s charm offensive masks the fact that Sunday's Czech GP has very likely sealed the direction of the championship. Lorenzo was in sublime form to win his fifth race of the season – Rossi and Márquez have three each – at Brno with…

14-YEAR-OLD Matthew Gilmore, became Australia’s latest World Champion, winning the FIM 250cc Youth World Cup in Lamothe-Landerron, France. Gilmore, from Cowra in New South Wales, went through the heats unbeaten to post a 20 point maximum. The dramatic final, run at 1am local time, saw Gilmore claim the World Title after three restarts, taking the crown ahead of Mads Hansen (Denmark), Lukas Fienhage (Germany), Arslan Fayzullin (Russia) and Marcin Turowski (Poland). A 15-year-old Townsville teen, Brody Eves, was left scratching his head after bizarrely missing out on the final. Eves, who overcame two blown engines in practice, finished second in the semi-final, only to be excluded from the final on total accumulated points. The 2015 250cc World Cup title caps off an impressive six-week European trip for Gilmore, who finished…

YAMAHA IS TO launch a stripped-down, simplified version of its new R1 under the name R1S as part of its 2016 range. Even before the new 2015 R1 was shown, we revealed that the firm planned three derivatives – Yamaha trademarked the named R1, R1M and R1S simultaneously in early 2014, leaving little doubt about its intentions. The only question was how the three bikes would be differentiated. Now it turns out that the “S” will come at the opposite end of the spectrum to the heavily kitted R1M, with less equipment and a lower price tag Details revealed in a new Californian emissions document refer to three variants of the mid-range, normal-spec YZF-R1 for 2016 – each representing a different colour scheme – plus one colour option for the…

Reverse evolution isn’t such an uncommon developmental technique in the motorcycle industry, and it seems to me a wise way of working – particularly in light of my first-hand experiences with the growing range of four-cylinder S series models. BMW started off by developing the highest performing street-legal inline-four superbike of its time, and since then it has tempered, softened, adapted and rationalised all that technology to suit an ever-growing range of motorcycling genres. Given this direct lineage to the racetrack, it should be no surprise that the engine performance of the new S1000XR will stir the blood of any rider with a pulse, and its handling will ignite the flame of enthusiasm to take the road least linear whenever possible. The XR has come along at a perfect point…

Empire building Partly thanks to Graham’s input, MV’s 125 became a dominant force in the late 50s, with Carlo Ubbiali winning five world titles on it With only the Monza season finale to go, he had a real chance of taking the title Call that a track!? The Assen circuit on which Les Graham raced was over 16km long. These days the revamped track measures just 4.545km. “Les was the greatest of all MV’s riders” A mark of respect MV withdrew from the Isle of Man TT in 1954 in memory of Les Graham and his achievements in the sport Les Graham was part of that special breed of racer whose careers were interrupted by the Second World War. That was quite a life – racing on lethal street circuits…

The Central West of NSW has a plethora of interesting roadways to offer motorcycle riders, as well as some great little towns to use as destinations or overnight stops. It’s easy to see why the region is a very popular choice for travellers looking for less populated roads to enjoy a bit of downtime with their bikes. The township of Sofala can be accessed from a number of different directions, but for riders looking for well-sealed roads, the best options are from Bathurst in the south or Ilford to the north. The alternatives involve dirt and gravel roads that range from easygoing riding through to fire trails that require good ground clearance and off-road tyres. The main road from Bathurst to Sofala starts just east of the road bridge on…

Three first-timers on the rostrum, and runaway title leader Danny Kent (Leopard Racing) down in 21st. These facts alone tell the story of a truly bizarre Moto3 race, with only 16 riders of 32 finishers on the same lap as first-time winner Livio Loi (RW Racing Honda). It started raining some 30 minutes before the start, and riders (in all classes) were given extra sighting laps to assess these new conditions. Then, with the riders on the grid, it stopped, and the track started drying very quickly. Loi took a gamble, swapping his wet tyres for slicks on the grid. It paid off big-time. Alexis Masbou (SaxoPrint Honda) led away, and for the first three laps, chased by Efren Vázquez (Leopard Honda). Pole starter Kent was nowhere to be seen,…

Brno lends itself to ultra-close Moto3 racing, and it was all a bit too close on the first lap, when four riders went down together on the first corner, and another four a couple of corners later. Argentinean rider Gabriel Rodrigo (RBA KTM) lay doggo in the gravel, and the red flags came out as medical staff attended to him. His teammate Niklas Ajo didn’t make the restart, nor did Hiroki Ono (Leopard Honda) or Andrea Locatelli (Gresini Honda). The rest lined up again 30 minutes later for a 12-lap race. Leopard Honda teammates Efren Vázquez and Danny Kent each had an early turn at leading over the line, then Niccolò Antonelli (Ongetta Rivacold Honda), followed for several laps by Red Bull KTM teammates Brad Binder and Miguel Oliveira. Elsewhere…

The Supersport category usually generates exciting racing and the Queensland round was no exception. In the end, Callum Spriggs (Yamaha YRD/ Allsite Concrete Cutting/ Hydro Construction/YMI) threw everything he had at his competitors and his wins in races one and two and a fourth place in the final race saw him finish just one point ahead of race-three winner Rick Olson (Kawasaki Connection). An extremely under the weather Brayden Elliott (Hankook Tyres/Royan Truck Repairs/Muscat Trailers/ Suzuki) managed a 4-6-2 and now holds a 10-point championship lead over Spriggs in second. Spriggs, Olson and Elliott were joined by Troy Guenther (PI Technical/Motorsure/FreshChef/Arai/Motul) for three exciting races which had the teams and parents on pit wall unable to watch the wild action at times. Guenther’s 5-3-3 result was enough to claim third…

THE KJÆRGAARD DANISH FIM Speedway Grand Prix staged at Horsens on 8 August produced a victory for the home fans to cheer – but not from the expected rider. Peter Kildemand, who only came in to the SGP line-up in Round 4 because of the injury suffered by Jaroslaw Hampel, not only won but showed form that would give him an outside chance of breaking into the top eight in the championship. Kildemand was involved in three crashes during the dramatic meeting that left the top eight unchanged and that had a very familiar outcome to it as far as the three Aussies were concerned. Besides the spills the round was notable for three things. First, it was another temporary track with an extremely biased starting grid. Second, it again…

I REMEMBER SITTING in school and my mate and I would play a game, listening out for motorbikes and trying to pick what they were by the exhaust note. My dad rode, he still does, so bikes were always in my mind growing up. We moved from the northern beaches in Sydney to the Central Coast where there was plenty of places to ride, and I got a Honda S90. When I got my first job, dad went guarantor for a [Suzuki] TM125, and I joined Wyong MCC and started racing motocross at Jilliby. I spent several years racing motocross in the mid-70s, progressing to RM250s and B grade. It was the golden era of Gall, Gunter and Worrall, but I was never in that league. Gosford MCC had a…