Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol 71 Issue 05 i Australian Motorcycle News

A sports-tourer fills a big gap in Honda’s road range NEW EUROPEAN TYPE-approval documents have confirmed Honda will soon launch the NT1100 – an Africa Twin based sports-tourer that fills a big gap in its road range. The Crossrunner and the VFR800 it’s based on have both fallen foul of the latest Euro5 emissions rules. Since the Africa Twin’s compact 1084cc parallel twin matches the VFR’s much more complex engine on power at 75kW, while offering a healthy increase in torque, reduced manufacturing costs and simpler packaging, it’s a logical replacement. The type-approval documents list the NT1100 in two forms; the NT1100A with a manual six-speed transmission and the NT1100D with Honda’s DCT semi-auto gearbox, mimicking the Africa Twin and Rebel 1100 ranges that use the same engine. At 238kg…

The 125, 200, 250 and 390 engines are expected to be replaced HUSQVARNA’S SVARTPILEN scrambler and Vitpilen roadbike might merely be re-skinned KTM Dukes across a variety of capacities, but their neo-retro style and distinctly different feel makes them a compelling proposition. Now a second generation of the original ‘401’ models is nearing production in parallel with the next-gen Duke range. We’ve busted KTM’s future Duke singles being tested several times, with a variety of new engines from 125cc to around 400cc bolted to a shared – but completely redesigned – chassis. Now we can reveal an upcoming Husqvarna model with the same new frame and the largest of the engines. So here is the next-generation scrambler-styled Husqvarna Svartpilen. The addition of a screen, longer front mudguard and an unusually…

Aprilia’s new Tuono V4 uses the same Euro-5 compliant 65° V4 engine, chassis and new swingarm as the racier Factory version (AMCN Vol 70 No 23) but is designed to be used primarily on the road. This is big news for Aprilia who, breaking from tradition, has split the big V4 Tuono range into two distinct bikes. Traditionally, Aprilia has always produced multiple variants of its Tuono. Back when its naked was a twin-cylinder machine, there were ‘Factory’ spec, standard or limited-edition R versions. The different models were relatively similar, with tweaks made to the suspension and brakes to create the (usually lighter) sporty versions. However for 2021, Aprilia has produced two quite separate models. At the high end is the Factory version that we tested on track at Misano…

Too little, too late? It would be premature to say as much on the basis of Joan Mir’s performances in Austria. Suzuki was certainly last to the party, but the reigning world champion breathed fresh life into his title defence in the Spielberg double-header, thanks in large part to the fruits of Suzuki technicians’ labour over the summer break. Mir and teammate Alex Rins finally got their hands on the factory’s ride-height device when the season resumed in Austria in early August. Each of the other five factories in MotoGP already had developed the component, leaving Suzuki’s teamsters at a clear disadvantage. It was an immediate improvement, with both men using it in the Styrian GP race despite limited set-up time. Preparations weren’t exactly ideal. The device arrived on Friday…

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Martin hopes Marc can “learn from this and improve for the future” MATCH POINT? NOT quite. But Fabio Quartararo’s runaway victory in England felt like a decisive blow to the hopes of his title rivals. For the fifth time this year, the Frenchman was untouchable, making a mockery of the claim that Silverstone always delivers racing of the highest calibre. Covid-19 crises permitting, there are still six races to run. But with 65 points in hand, Quartararo is nearly out of sight. This was yet another ride of class, arguably his most controlled in a year full of them. In front of a bumper British crowd of 67,000, Quartararo showed what is becoming customary cool in the early laps to rise through the order before disappearing off into the distance.…

MCAMS YAMAHA’S JASON O’Halloran applied constant pressure to steal victory in the final race of the Cadwell Park round of the British Superbike championship held over 20-22 August, extending his points lead and denying Peter Hickman a perfect weekend. O’Halloran, who took his ninth race win of the season, was grateful for the crowd support and commented that Cadwell Park is the closest thing to a home round. “The whole team have done an awesome job this weekend, we were up against it with the weather so we had to use the races to figure out a setting,” he said. “Each race the bike was better and in the last race the bike was the best it’s been all weekend.” Hickman had dominated the weekend up until the final stages…

THE FIRST EVER round of the Speedway Grand Prix series staged in Russia saw Bartosz Zmarzlik and Artem Laguta move closer to claiming the top two placings in the world championship – but which of them will be champion is no closer to being resolved. Laguta triumphed last Saturday leading home Zmarzlik in the final, meaning the defending champion is only one point in the lead in the championship with the rest of the contenders well adrift, including both Australians. After the 20 heats Laguta (14), Tai Woffinden (13) and Zmarzlik (12) had dominated ahead of the usual congestion for the last semi-final berths. Leon Madsen and Anders Thomsen both scored 10, one ahead of Fredrik Lindgren, who was in turn one ahead of Emil Sayfutdinov and Max Fricke who…

In a year when travel restrictions totally unravelled ASBK schedules along the eastern seaboard, Hidden Valley celebrated a triumphant revival of the long dormant Superbike/ Supercar collaboration. Happy times in the Territory? Absolutely, 2020 was such a challenging year, requiring a level of flexibility from everyone. Returning to a level of ‘normality’ was just what the doctor ordered. The Top End Road Racing Association (TERRA) was involved from the inception, co-ordinating the timing infrastructure, upgrades to the track, and during the event we provided corner marshals and bike recovery for each of the Superbike sessions. The spectators responded really well to the return of the bikes and the comments we received were nothing but positive. Wayne Maxwell going head-to-head with a Supercar was definitely a highlight. A month later, at…

TRIUMPH’S JOURNEY TO become a major player in the LAMS market has taken another giant step forward with the announcement of a Tiger Sport 660. Last year the UK manufacturer quietly showed its dealers drawings of a trio of upcoming 660cc three-cylinder models. The first – originally dubbed ‘roadster’ – became the Trident 660, and now the second – first called ‘adventure sports’ – is on the verge of its official launch. The third will be a full adventure model. Triumph has released images and confirmed the name Tiger Sport 660. It hasn’t revealed technical details or even a projected timescale for production. Rather it says the new model is ‘coming soon’ and more information will be forthcoming in the next few weeks. The images show there’s no intention for…

“EVERY TIME HE’S STARTED FROM THE SECOND ROW, WE’VE BEEN ON THE PODIUM. IT’S QUITE CLEAR WHAT WE NEED TO DO” We catch up with the Ecstar Suzuki team, including reigning world champ Joan Mir’s crew chief Frankie Carchedi, to discuss that oh-so overdue rear squat device. Checkitoutfrom . CASH FOR KICKS A stark comparison came into focus last week when Marc Marquez met fellow Spaniards Ferran Torres and Rodri, who play professional football for Manchester City. Torres cost the club $A43m, while Man City paid a transfer fee of $A117m for Rodri. Compare this with Marquez, who’s reputed to earn $A17m each season from Honda. TWO BOB’S ON BONANG Authorities are sealing the final 10km of Victoria’s remote Bonang Road in Gippsland. So we now get over 100km of…

FOR MANY YEARS Australia’s most formidable annual motorcycling fixture had been the intercity Reliability Trial between Melbourne and Sydney. But after the Great War of 1914-1918, the event became so poorly supported that the New South Wales Motor Cycle Club (NSWMCC) announced its intention to organise a Six Day Trial to be held entirely in its home state. Initial newspaper reports speculated this might be titled the “One Thousand Miles of Christmas”, and pub talk was that the Trial would start on Boxing Day from the NSWMCC premises in Elizabeth Street. There would be a two-day return ride to Newcastle, followed by another to Bathurst, then a third to Goulburn, for a total of six days. However this 1000-mile furphy never got any further than the front bar of Wentworth…

Hand-drawn heroes Browsing through the mag, before a thorough read, I came across your Gassit Raceway centrefold by illustrator Roger Harvey (AMCN Vol 71 No 02). Roger has depicted a great image and some great names also. I was lucky enough to have an ‘Aussie Circuit’ created for me back in the mid-90s. I was a mechanic for two riders attending the Bentoel International Stadium Supercross held over two weeks, in Yogyakarta and Surabaya, Indonesia. We met a mad bike fan named Ari and, in return for a ‘pit pass’, we got to travel and sightsee the local area with the help of his friend who had transport. We visited temples and tasted local food, all unreal. Ari is also a talented artist, and created ‘Aussie Circuit’ for me, a…

For a long time – and in some instances, it’s still very much the case – the price of a Chinese-made motorcycle was what justified putting up with some substandard componentry or quality of finish. The money you could save often meant the difference between being able to afford a brand-new machine compared to a secondhand rival from Japan or Europe. But that’s beginning to change and not least for the well-established CFMoto brand, which has been in the manufacturing game since 1989, a 15 years before today’s learner-aged riders were being born. And the fact that KTM has entrusted the production of its midsized parallel-twin motorcycles to CFMoto at its Hangzhou-based manufacturing plant proves it’s not a company churning out substandard products. In terms of quality of finish, the…

Many of us love the latest gadgets – they can make life easier, and in the case of adventure bikes festooned with electronics, often safer and easier to use. But, like jetting off from the big smoke to go camping, it’s nice to get back to basics and riding Suzuki’s V-Strom 650XT is like that. There’s no waiting for a TFT dash to load, there’s no online diploma needed to work out how to change modes and, compared to most of the current crop of adventure bikes, your bank balance will look a hell of a lot heathier, too. When we got our paws on the V-Strom, the only bike in the test fleet that vaguely resembled an adventure bike was the 2021 Beta 390 RR Enduro that Wattie tested…

Ducati began its journey as a renowned high-performance motorcycle manufacturer on 12 September 1971, when the factory’s first multi-cylinder grand prix bike, resplendent in silver metalflake paint, rolled out onto the grid at Monza. BY THE END OF 1971 DUCATI’S 500 ENGINE WAS MAKING 69HP AT 12,000RPM The occasion was the Italian 500cc Grand Prix, climax of the world championship season, played out in front of a vast crowd of excited Italian fans. For the first time a big Ducati was taking on the might of MV Agusta, the aristocratic marque that had won every premier-class title since 1958. Until 1971, Ducati had exclusively raced and manufactured single-cylinder motorcycles of 125, 250, 350 and 450cc capacities. No wonder the company had fallen on hard times, because the age of the…

In 13 December 2001, the motorcycle world lost one of its great free thinkers and innovative engineers when 46-year old Frenchman Claude Fior was killed at the controls of his self-built plane, after crashing in thick fog on approach to the runway at France’s Nogaro race circuit where he lived. With Fior’s death passed a man whose boundless creativity, matched by an appetite for fun, had graced the Grand Prix paddocks for more than a decade in the 1980s and 90s, and whose capacity for original thought marked him as a radical force in alternative motorcycle design. The distinctive Fior wishbone front suspension design, which dates back to 1976, has since been copied by designers all over the world, from Britain to New Zealand, Germany to Japan, and in the…

Locatelli looked every inch the top Superbike competitor again AFTER VARIOUS KINDS of World Championship fights that Jonathan Rea (KRT) has won for six straight years, there has never been one quite like this. Rea now has two riders making his life hard, and both on different bikes that in many ways are making his once-dominant Kawasaki look third-best right now. The fact that Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pata Yamaha with Brixx) and Scott Redding (Aruba Ducati) are the riders giving Rea the roughest time is not surprising, and there is now a very definite big three, all taking turns to be the dominant one. Weekend by weekend, race by race, their prowess waxes and wanes but at this round, nothing was predictable, even after one of them had two clear race…

YAMAHA’S DECISION TO cut ties with Maverick Viñales with immediate effect meant it once again had to shuffle its pack. Test rider Cal Crutchlow was moved up to the factory squad to deputise at his home GP, while Moto2 hotshot Jake Dixon replaced Franco Morbidelli, who is still recovering from injury. But once Morbidelli returns at Misano in mid-September, Yamaha will move the Italian immediately to the factory squad alongside Quartararo. “The opportunity is for Frankie to grade up,” said Lin Jarvis, Yamaha Managing Director, at Silverstone. “Frankie’s been on our radar for a while. He’s in his third year. It’s been a difficult year this year. But this will give him an opportunity ahead of schedule to move up to the factory team.” In a sensational turn of events,…

MEANWHILE, TRIUMPH HAS leaked vague video images of an 1160cc sports bike it calls the Speed Triple RR. We reckon it will have a half fairing and won’t be a full-on racer replica as the handlebar is still above the top fork yoke, rather than clip-ons. We also predict power will be unchanged from the Speed Triple but perhaps upped with an ‘off road use only’ exhaust so Triumph doesn’t have to re-certify its emissions. The suspension and brakes probably won’t change much either, and the tank and tail unit are clearly unaltered.…

THERE IS A lot going on behind the scenes at Yamaha. We’ve already reported how the plan is to be totally carbon-neutral by 2050 and to replace its four-cylinder Supersport range with twins and triples. Now we can reveal that Yamaha is planning to be at the forefront of the worldwide revolution in rider safety. After cornering ABS and traction control were followed by this year’s spate of radar sensors, Yamaha is jumping in to hopefully lead the next stage of motorcycle safety. A patent for its rider interface system shows how it might look when you’re on-board. This patent, published in Japan, reveals Yamaha’s approach to how to convey all the extra information from the additional sensors and V2V communication to a rider. While modern cars are increasingly moving…

Savic review Loved Roothy’s recent article (AMCN Vol 71 No 04) noting the evolution of motorcycling trends in the great land of Oz. From the old boys riding long distance on big heavy and now antiquated machines, through to the high-performance sportsbike era. Hipsters stripped down their relatively low-powered bar hoppers and put their own stamp on motorcycling Then the old guys eventually split their allegiance to either cruisers, adventure and others including nakedbikes, depending on their personal preferences or physical constraints. Meanwhile the hipsters stripped down their relatively low-powered bar hoppers (sorry – café hoppers) and put their own stamp on motorcycling. It was great to see Roothy acknowledge that even though his idea of riding isn’t the same as others, he welcomed the change and diversity of bikes…

FOR THOSE LOOKING for a go (almost) anywhere and do anything motorcycle but that don’t yet have an unrestricted licence, Suzuki makes a LAMS version of the V-Strom 650XT. The Learner Approved V-Strom is electronically restricted to 35kW rather than the 52kW the unrestricted version is smashing out, but in every other way it’s identical – proper big bike looks and handling in a learner-legal package. Because the LAMS version is electronically restricted it is possible to derestrict it, with numerous companies offering to reflash the ECU, but they also run a disclaimer stating that the mod is ‘not for road use’. While it’s possible to purchase a LAMS version and derestrict it when you progress to an unrestricted licence, your state’s road authority will no doubt have a series…

I can’t wait to see Remy Gardner join these young guns WE ARE FAREWELLING Valentino Rossi this season, and for a while we thought we’d be saying goodbye to Marc Marquez as well. That hasn’t happened and Marc showed at that crazy race in Austria what he is still capable of when the going gets tough (after taking painkillers he challenged for the lead before crashing out after switching to his “wet” bike). Being a MotoGP rider is a bit like having an office job where you are scared to take a holiday because you don’t know who will be sitting in your chair when you come back to work. This cauldron of intensity can involve mind games and intrigue. But the latest generation of high-achieving MotoGP riders seem to…

THE NEWS THAT Scott Redding would sign for BMW in 2022 sent some shock waves through the WorldSBK paddock, none more so than inside Ducati. Redding decided not to stay, according to some sources, rather than being kicked out, although both he and Ducati agreed at the beginning the only reason to sign him two years ago was to win the World Championship. Ironically, that is still possible for Redding, but things have not worked out as planned for either rider or Ducati. Redding was also offered a reduced salary for a third year, and the rider himself says he races to make a living as well as to try and win. He also cites the lack of development required to make his bike handle better and be more consistent…

DESPITE THE LIMITATIONS of Covid, club racing stalwart Eddy Garner has clocked up more kilometres and competed at more race meetings than the stars of ASBK. “I’m having fun while I can,” he says as he bunkers down back in Victoria for another extended lockdown. Since the start of the racing season Eddy has competed in Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory in a variety of club and state meetings, as well as the 2021 National BEARS Championship. It’s involved being on the road, at one time for over a month while clocking up 9000km. But the effort, involving gaining permits and working through Covid restrictions, has been well worth it. “I’ve been kissed on the ass by a fairy,” Eddy says, explaining that many of the race…

THE HARLEY-DAVIDSON Sportster former AMCN editor Ken Wootton raced in the late 1990s is leading the 2021 National Roaring Sporties Championship. This is being run with Formula 4 in the OZBEARS National Series. Originally given to Ben Lucchitti for winning the 1998 National Series, it was sold to Wootton, who enlisted Frasers H-D racing guru Pieter Van Straalen to convert it to a racer. Ken campaigned the #16 bike for several years and after his death in 2011 it was sold out of his estate to Eddy Garner. Sebastian Downie bought it off Garner for his teenage son James to race, who has set pole and won every race, so far, this year! Brandishing James’s MX racing number #616, the ex-Wootton bike lives on in the manner its original owner…