Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol 74 Issue 18 i Australian Motorcycle News

The 1300cc boxer twin that debuted in BMW’s R 1300 GS a couple of years ago has finally been adapted to create the naked sporty R 1300 R. And it’s a pretty compelling proposition, slotting into the range with an entry price of $A22,200 – substantially less than the identically-powered GS model, despite lacking nothing in terms of performance. Of course, being BMW, that starting price can grow pretty quickly once you delve into the options catalogue, and the range extends past $30k with the ‘Option 719’ fully-loaded version. The switch from the old 1254cc ‘1250’ to the new 1300cc engine is much more than just a capacity hike, as the 1300 is a completely redesigned take on the boxer twin. It has a shorter stroke, bigger bore and higher…

‘It also shows how really, really good the Aprilia basically is’’ Peter Bom puts Jorge Martin’s return to MotoGP into context after a strong result in Qatar’s Sprint race, despite limited time on his new bike. Visit amcn.com.au for exclusive video reports from Peter during each round. ON THE ROAD AGAIN Love ‘em or loathe ‘em, there’s no denying Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman bring motorcycling into the mainstream. The dynamic duo is back with long-time cameraman Claudio Von Planta on another epic, this time on 70s clunkers riding from Ewan’s home in Scotland to Charley’s London pad via Scandinavia, Eastern and Central Europe. Long Way Home screens on Apple TV+ later this year. VOOM HITS 227KM/H Ahead of its Aussie launch, CFMoto’s new 500SR WOOM has set a class record at…

MORE SPECTACULAR action from the WorldSSP300 class, in its final season. Pole man Julio Garcia (Prodina Kawasaki) was third in Race One, with local hero Jeffrey Buis (Freudenberg KTM-PALIGO Racing) winning. Humberto Maier (Yamaha AD78 FIMLA by MS Racing) was second, putting three different bikes inside the top three places. In Race Two, Buis won by the narrowest margin ever, 0.001 seconds, from David Salvador (Team ProDina XCI Kawasaki). Daniel Mogeda (Pons Motorsport Italika Racing Kawasaki) was the final podium finisher. Buis now has a vast tally of 16 race wins in WorldSSP300. In the points, he now leads Garcia 75 to 61.…

BLUE SKIES, warm days and dust replaced last year’s rain at the 2025 Condo 750 navigational race held over 3-5 April. The Prologue took place on the Friday afternoon with local rider Todd Ridley setting the pace after a short 62km lap around the outskirts of Condobolin in Central NSW. With a healthy field of almost 50 riders, there was plenty of outback action with a total distance of over 1250km to be covered in three days. An early start on the Saturday saw the riders head out on the first of five competitive sections for the day. Ridley had a dust-free run, starting in first place – but a dodgy ICO antenna made navigation a challenge. Although rookie Gregory Prisk was no stranger to fast riding he now had…

Eleven years ago, at California’s annual uber-exclusive Pebble Beach Concours in Monterey, French engineer Olivier Midy unveiled a new limited-production motorcycle completely unlike anything else ever built for sale. The Midual Type 1 flat-twin roadster was the evolution of a prototype that Midy and his brother Francois had unveiled in 1999 at the Paris Salon. He then spent the next 15 years patiently developing it into a customer-ready model targeted at those high rollers who’ll regard the Midual’s current €170,000 ($A313,500) starting price (including French tax, or €141,000 tax free) as fair value for a hand-built work of two-wheeled art unlike anything else on planet Earth. It’s increasingly difficult nowadays to dream up any new way of building a four-stroke motorcycle engine without thinking outside the box, especially in terms…

It didn’t take long for Alex Marquez to realise 2025 could be really interesting. A handful of laps into the first post-season test at Barcelona confirmed what he had suspected when looking at the data of Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin throughout last year: Ducati’s GP24 is astonishingly good. “Love at first sight” was how he described the first outing on that chilly November morning. Since then, the double world champion (Moto3, Moto2) has produced the best riding of his career. He topped the next two pre-season tests before racking up seven straight second places in the first seven outings of the year. In that time, he’s also led the MotoGP world championship. Not bad going on a year-old machine. More than the numbers, it’s the fact the younger Marquez…

“IT WAS NICKO WHO STRIPPED OUR OLD R60 BM AND PAINTED IT BABY SHIT YELLOW BACK IN THE LATE 1980S” MY LITTLE brother Nicko retired this year from a 35-year career teaching troubled teenagers. It suits, he was one. We both were. So how’s retirement? Not much has changed. He’s always been out of step with the rest of the motorcycle world, always been a trailblazer, or a weirdo, or carving a line outside the norm. Like me, he’s usually had a few bikes to do different jobs too. Like the 250 MZ two stroke with an enclosed chain that did 140,000km of commuting before wheezing to a stop in a cloud of smoke. We stripped it to do the rings but the bloody thing was so worn from city slogging…

What a start! How are you feeling after your first 24-hour race? A bit different to BSB… To be honest, it was incredible. To win Le Mans on debut there is huge. People try for years and years to win that race and never do. The last time YART won there was 2009. It’s such a difficult race and not just about speed, it’s about a little bit of luck. There’s so much to the race that when you get to the end and you win, it’s an incredible feeling. It’s something that I’ve not really experienced before in my career. In short circuit racing, you get 20 laps and it’s on you to race and finish. With EWC, you’ve got two teammates who need to do their part. You…

Royal Enfield’s long-awaited big-bore Himalayan-style adventure model is finally nearing completion, and we’ve caught a near-production prototype being tested in Europe. Based on Royal Enfield’s air-cooled parallel twin, this model has been part of the company’s product plan since as early as 2022. So far we’ve seen the 648cc, 35kW (47hp) twin in such models as the Continental, Interceptor, Shotgun, Meteor 650, Bear 650 and Classic 650. It’s given a very different home in this model, which is expected to borrow the Himalayan name used previously on the 411cc and 450cc Himalayan singles and possibly displace 750cc. It dispenses with the retro style of all Royal Enfield’s current twin-cylinder models, opting instead for a modern approach to its chassis design and styling. There’s a monoshock at the back, where all…

Harley-Davidson is facing internal upheaval as a major shareholder demands sweeping change at the top. The crisis comes as America’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer is threatened by the potential impacts of Trump tariffs and possible retaliation from other countries. It is also losing customers, primarily in its home market, and has released disappointing results for 2024. Now its second-largest shareholder is calling on other shareholders to join it in asking for directors – including CEO Jochen Zeitz – to be removed. Zeitz has already announced he’s retiring later this year, once a suitable replacement can be found, but investment group H Partners, which owns a 9.1 per cent stake in the company, wants action now. In an open letter to Harley shareholders, H Partners wrote: “We believe an absentee CEO who…

LETTER OF THE ISSUE Love Child Hi Greg, Congratulations on your appointment to a magazine with such a storied history. I am now officially an “old bastard” and it’s taken me about (give or take) 45 years to write to an editor… and you’re it! The changes you’ve made have mostly been refreshing, thank you… but after all this time I feel like I’ve seen enough of Adam Child wheelstanding and comparing his lap times! WTF! If you need this sort of content, fair enough: you’re the boss. But maybe if that’s what you want, get someone that doesn’t have to ‘blow their own horn’ so much… Please!? Dave Mohr “WHO DOESN’T LOVE A GOOD ELBOW-DOWN SHOT OR A PERFECTLY TIMED WHEELIE?” Dave, you make a fair point in some…

JACK MILLER Sprint: DNF, Result: DNF. A heartbreaking end. Jack had climbed as high as seventh when he was beset by mechanical woes. After a tough Sprint, changes meant he was on for a good points haul. “The bike felt better,” he said. “We made a step with the front end. We pulled the headstock back. Got more feeling. When Morbidelli was coming through, he kind of parked me off the end of the track at the last corner and then put himself into the Long Lap. And then I went into Turn 1 and he did the f..king same thing again and that allowed Binder and Acosta through. But after that I was able to regroup. One of the fairing bolts was touching the wiring loom at the back…

RULES AND MORE rules are the watchword of modern-day WorldSBK racing. This year, so far the BMW official team lost its Superconcession chassis and is having to use the standard new 2025 homologation chassis, much to the team’s annoyance. Yamaha has gone the other way recently, with a softer Superconcession chassis for the R1 (it were only allowed it because of its relatively poor recent results), which came in for the Portimao round onwards. Both of these tech interventions seem to have had an effect, Toprak saying his bike is not turning as well as the previous one (despite three Portimao race wins) while Locatelli is letting the results do the talking with Portimao and Assen podiums and that amazing race win at Assen. This year, with the rev limits…

AS ALWAYS in the British Superbikes, the drama starts long before the first round. As AMCN went to press Bradley Ray, Leon Haslam and Glenn Irwin had posted the leading three times at the final Oulton Park pre-season test with one day left to run. There have been some sweeping changes to the grid ahead of the first round to be held at the same circuit over May 3-5, headlined by 2024 champion Kyle Ryde being thrown a lifeline after the apparent collapse and resurrection of OMG Racing. World Superbike refugee Bradley Ray was set to partner Ryde, but will now compete for the reformed Raceways Yamah team and topped the final Oulton Park session. After operating his own team with BMW machinery the last two seasons, Haslam has made…

Most of us have probably got a significant memory of where we were when they found out some news, whether it be some world headline like when US President Kennedy was shot or when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, or more personal news, either good or bad. For me, one very vivid memory I have is where I was when I found out that Billy Sanders had died. It has been 40 years since the speedway world was rocked by the news and it remains the biggest off-track story that has hit the sport, ever. It was 23 April in 1985 (the next morning in Australia) when the news broke. It was the time before mobile phones for making urgent contact with people and I used to travel for…

BMW has updated its popular F 900 R and F 900 XR middleweight twins – with both machines receiving similar modifications and parts. Both models get lighter wheels. Both get completely a new fully-adjustable upside-down fork. And they get a slimmer rear end, bold new colours and graphics, plus a lighter 0.9kg battery. While the F 900 R is, seemingly, a naked roadster and the F 900 XR a sporting cross-over with longer-travel suspension, they share the same 895cc parallel twin engine and steel ‘shell’ frame as well as many cycle parts. The engine remains the same for 2025, producing 77kw (105hp) at 8500rpm and 92Nm at 6500rpm, but there’s a new Dynamic riding mode in the standard package, while Akrapovic now supplies a factory option silencer for both models…

Running a business comes with a certain amount of responsibility; financial pressures, customer expectations, operational challenges and all the strategic and administrative juggling that comes with it. But the man in charge of an inner-Melbourne Vespa dealership, Dean Tonon, adds a different kind of responsibility to his management requirements, and it’s one that can’t be measured in spreadsheets or sales targets. Because in 1951, just five years after Piaggio & Co created the very first Vespa scooter, Dean’s grandfather Vittorio – Tony to his friends, Nonno to Dean – immigrated to Australia with his wife and sons, one of them Dean’s father Frank, then aged nine. After living in an immigration camp, Tony got a job working as a mechanic for Bruce Small, the Australian distributor for various two-wheeled brands…

CAN ANYONE stop Bartosz Zmarzlik from winning a sixth World Speedway Championship as the 2025 season kicks off on Saturday 3 May, with the first of 10 rounds starting at Landshut in Germany? Zmarzlik currently ranks alongside Swede Ove Fundin with five world crowns, with just one more needed to match that legendary Kiwi, the late Ivan Mauger, and another Swede, Tony Rickardsson. Since his first full season in the SGP ranks, Zmarzlik’s record has been remarkable with two silver medals, one bronze and a worst-ever finish of fifth place to go with the five golds. It’s almost unfair to compare the record of Zmarzlik and the other 14 riders in the permanent lineup trying to dethrone him. Dan Bewley finished second in 2024, Martin Vaculik third in 2023 and…

A few years ago returning from an international launch for AMCN, I sat beside a pilot hitching a lift home. He told me two important things. One: Queenstown is the world’s most challenging international airport for a pilot to fly into. Two: You can’t say you’ve flown until you’ve been in a Tiger Moth. Not that long ago I rode past Queenstown’s airport on the way to the Burt Munro Challenge. The planes seemed almost to be landing in the Kiwi ski capital’s main street. Then I got a flight in a Tiger Moth as a birthday present. The little biplane lurched off the tarmac onto the grass to find some bumps to help it get airborne. At 100m the summer heat turned into the coldest winter day. All the…

A Supermotard by definition is an off-road motorcycle adapted for racing with road wheels, brakes and suspension. So, when Ducati rolled out the Hypermotard many years ago with an 1100cc air cooled V-twin, 17-inch wheels, brakes off a superbike, motorcross ‘bars and a plank for a seat, it was no surprise that they went and won the famous dirt and bitumen Pikes Peak Hill Climb with it. Over the years, the Hypermotard has evolved, and the current version is a 950cc water-cooled V-twin beast with similar off-road DNA. While not putting out superbike horsepower, it will dominate a tight and twisty backroad in the right hands. But it’s still a bit big compared to a proper racing Supermotard. Enter the single-cylinder Hypermotard 698 Mono. Now even the smallest racetracks and the…

It’s no surprise to know that Victoria’s Great Ocean Road features on every quality ride or drive list ever published. So when the opportunity came to shepherd two superb current-model adventure bikes along its epic and storied twists and turns, it was time to get the band back together and revisit this superb 243km stretch of tarmac – with a few little twists of our own. It all started out swimmingly, with our first two days bathed in glorious autumn sunshine – until it didn’t. Thankfully, the best bits were enjoyed in warm, dry comfort. You know what they say: “Take an umbrella and it never rains.” Therein lay our mistake. My trusty riding compadre Bill Werner and I would share the two precious press bikes, a monstrous Ducati Multistrada…

“THE FRONT TUCKED AND DOWN I WENT – SOMETHING I’VE DONE A THOUSAND TIMES, BUT NOT LIKE THAT” SO MUCH HAPPENS in this crazy, two-wheeled life I’m living! With the wet-dry-wet-dry chaos of the Sydney ASBK round behind us, we packed everything into the trusty HiAce and hit the road for sunny Queensland. The plan was to drive up, leave the van at stunt riding guru Matt Mingay’s place, then fly home and come back again to race Round One of the Qld state titles at Queensland Raceway. Bit of a juggle, but that’s racing life. Dad and I were on a plane before sunrise, picked up the van, and went straight to the track. I’d worked a few days that week, so I missed Friday practice and had to jump…

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