Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol 74 Issue 20 i Australian Motorcycle News

The ongoing saga of KTM’s insolvency appears to be drawing to a close with an €800 million ($A1.4 billion) injection of cash from its Indian partner brand Bajaj – but if regulators approve the deal, it will see Bajaj also taking control of the company and its subsidiaries Husqvarna and GasGas. KTM AG and two subsidiaries filed for ‘self-administration’ last November when a combination of overproduction and slowing sales left it with a cashflow problem that prevented the company from meeting its debt obligations. Under Austrian law, the self-administration process gave protection from creditors for 90 days while the existing management stayed in place, requiring them to come up with a restructuring plan that would be approved by creditors. That plan, approved on 25 February, set out terms that would…

IN TRUTH, this result was in the offing from the eve of the GP. Aragon has been Marquez territory in years gone by. And the riders sitting first and second in the championship made short work of this weekend, with Marc Marquez (Lenovo Ducati) producing his most dominant weekend to date in factory red. After the relative struggles of Jerez and Silverstone, there was very little to give his rivals comfort here. Yes, his pole time was only 0.2sec faster than second (last year it was 0.8sec), and Alex Marquez (Gresini Ducati) had the temerity to lead the opening laps of the Sprint. Yet Marc topped every session, won the Sprint at a canter and led every lap of Sunday’s feature race. So total dominance. His victory here one year ago…

THE OUTSIDE line around Aragon’s stunning final left-hander isn’t a regular place for overtaking. But Deniz Oncu (Ajo Kalex) proved he’s no ordinary rider, as he pipped Diogo Moreira (Italtrans Kalex) to victory by riding around the Brazilian’s outside on the run to the finish line. Just 0.003sec was in it. This race had been billed as one of tyre conservation. Yet Barry Baltus (Fantic Kalex), Oncu, polesitter Moreira and Aron Canet (Fantic Kalex) showed total disregard by forging a ferocious pace out front that few could live with. Back in third on lap seven, Oncu lept ahead of Canet on lap eight then Baltus on lap 13. With two to go, his lead over Moreira was 0.7sec. Yet the Brazilian’s late speed was frightening, as his personal best lap was…

TROY HERFOSS required nothing less than a race victory to give his Mission King of the Baggers Indian title defence any hope – and the tenacious Aussie delivered at Road America, taking victory in race two after a spectacular clash with Harley’s Bradley Smith. “You’ve got to be able to ride a bike fast, but when you get out there and the flag drops, it’s about racing a motorbike and it’s a fun old game,” Herfoss remarked afterwards, adding, “I think I’m pretty good at that game!” Herfoss led much of the second encounter, locked in a thrilling duel with Harley-Davidson x Dynojet Factory Racing rider Smith. The race unfolded in stark contrast to the previous day, with Herfoss bolting from the line to take the holeshot from Smith and H-D…

NOT THAT his rivals needed a reminder, but Bartosz Zmarzlik has started the 2025 Speedway Grand Prix series showing all and sundry that he will again be the benchmark as he seeks a sixth Speedway World Championship. Australian duo Brady Kurtz and Jack Holder are the nearest to the Pole on the points table, heading in to a crucial three rounds this month. There have been two changes to the meeting format this year, with a Sprint Race added to half of the 10 rounds. The 16 riders are initially drawn into eight pairs for one minute of track time where the rider with the fastest lap time progresses, into a further four pairs from where only the fastest goes into a four-lap Sprint Race – which carries 4,3,2 and…

Still a teenager when he won his first Moto2 race at Silverstone on 25 May, Senna Agius may just be Australia’s next world champion. The win has helped turn around a season that looked a little hit and miss after two podium finishes in the first few races. Banking 25 points after Silverstone boosted him to sixth in the standings going into Round 8 at Aragon. Senna has achieved a lot in just a few years but his hardest critic is himself. And that’s were he finds his motivation. “I’ve just got this underlying fire in me. And it doesn’t matter what it was, doesn’t matter what I was doing, if it’s my training, if I was a tennis player, it would be the exact same. And I don’t know…

RACING WHAT, WHERE & WHEN RIDE DAYS & SCHOOLS Phillip Island Ride Days/0490 281 840 Phillip Island, Vic Sydney Motorsport Park Ride Days/0490 281 840 SMSP, NSW Murray Valley Training Co 0459 415 787 Barnawartha North, Vic Champion’s Ride Days (07) 3287 4144  Broadford, Vic Collie Motorplex, WA Morgan Park, Qld The Bend, SA Trakdayz 0401 484 898 Wanneroo, WA California Superbike School/1300 793 423 Phillip Island, Vic SMSP, NSW Broadford, Vic Morgan Park Qld Mount Gambier MCC Coaching/Ride Days 0448 951 163 Mac Park, SA Ride-Tek MTA 1300 788 382  Sandown, Vic Ridedays WA (08) 9409 1002 Wanneroo, WA Collie, WA Top Rider 1300 131 362 Various venues, Qld Phoenix MCC Junior Coaching 0403 386 788 Tailem Bend, SA Mallala, SA RALLIES & SHOWS 14 JUNE A Show &…

When it became clear that aerodynamic appendages were a valuable tool in MotoGP racing a few years ago, it opened a Pandora’s Box of increasingly extravagant bulges and spoilers intended to extract every ounce of available downforce both in straight lines and during cornering. Now BMW has filed a patent for a technology that shows the next step in achieving an aerodynamic benefit thanks to internal air ducts and a fan to blast air through strategically-placed jet nozzles. The idea of using thrusters to help control a bike was mooted back in 2018 when we reported that Bosch had demonstrated a prototype system that used gas generators – the same tech featured in airbags – paired to a rider-assist system to provide brief blasts of thrust, countering slides and preventing…

Kove is one of the growing number of convincing Chinese motorcycle brands with a range of models to compete with major Japanese and European bike makers – now it plans to enter the Australian market by the end of this year. The news comes as another intriguing new model has just been type-approved in China. At the moment, Kove’s model line-up in China spreads across five model ranges. In the Adventure sector it offers a trio of parallel twin machines – the 498cc, 35kW (50hp) 510X and the 525X, which actually has a fractionally smaller 494cc twin with 39.6kW (53hp), plus the much more appealing 800X with a 71kW (95hp), 799cc twin that’s essentially a clone of KTM’s LC8c motor. Then there’s the ‘Rally’ segment, which includes two single-cylinder 450…

PRINTED HORSE POWER French custom motorcycle firm lDAB Motors and Vita Veloce Team, a design and technology collective co-founded by Colombian singer J Balvin, have produced a unique electric motorcycle featuring 3D printed bodywork. It is claimed to be fully functional and the first of a limited production run. Meanwhile, US-based Competition Distributing uses metal 3D printing to make vintage bike parts. NOW IT’S AN ECO H-D This Harley has just taken what its rider claims is the first motorcycle journey using ‘solar fuel’. German professor Aldo Steinfeld has been working for years on this strategy to use sustainable fuel on combustion engines. The fuel is produced by solar thermochemistry, where concentrated solar heat turns water and CO2 into a carbon-neutral fuel that can replace petrol in any combustion engine. It’s…

Enter NOW at amcn.com.au/master-your-machine for your chance to WIN! PRIZE: A Level 1 CSS Experience on a BMW S 1000 RR for you and a mate, valued at over $2,600!* *Terms and conditions apply Unlock your riding potential with a Level 1 California Superbike School Experience on a BMW S 1000 RR! You and a mate will tackle the six most common errors in modern track riding, gain personalised coaching, and transform those vague fears into precise confidence and control. Experience dramatic improvement in cornering, stability and speed – no matter what your experience level – in a world-class, safety-focused environment that guarantees real progress from your very first day. *Redeem your ride at any of CSS’s Australian venues on any course date, subject to booking availability. Visit amcn.com.au/master-your-machine for…

AUSTRALIA HAS a new hero to cheer as Senna Agius (IntactGP Kalex) took advantage of some thrilling late chaos to triumph in what many are saying was the best Moto2 finish in years. It was a thriller from start to finish as Agius scrapped it out with polesitter Aron Canet (Fantic Kalex), Diogo Moreira (Italtrans), David Alonso (Aspar Kalex) and Izan Guevara (Pramac Boscoscuro) all race long. The drama had started early with title leader Manuel Gonzalez (Intact GP) botching his start before crashing when passing Barry Baltus (Fantic Kalex) at Turn 6 on lap four. Canet led from lap two to 16 as war broke out behind. Agius’ bike was under-geared, meaning he was hopelessly slow on the straights, which constantly allowed Moreira and the ever-improving Alonso chances to…

DANIEL ‘CHUCKY’ Sanders and Red Bull KTM have tightened their grip on the 2025 World Rally Raid title with a comprehensive victory in the South African round of the championship. The records started to fall last November when Chucky returned KTM to the winner’s podium in the 2024 Rallye du Maroc. Almost immediately he followed up with victory in the 2025 Dakar, setting a new record of five consecutive World Rally Raid stage wins: the first rider in history to lead this marquee event from start to finish, despite being totally outnumbered by arch rivals Honda HRC. Then followed the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, held entirely in the massive dunes of the United Arab Emirates, where the yo-yo effect – win one day and get creamed the next – often…

Sitting at the traffic lights in dead silence, I could hear people talking as they pointed at my motorcycle. Some were going “What is that?”, some were saying “Wow, is that an electric bike?”, some were just smiling at the chance to see something different on the road after spending all day at the Adelaide Motorsport Festival that had featured everything from F1 racers to drift cars. To demonstrate that this wasn’t some underpowered city bike, I gave it an extra tweak as I took off. On a bike with 200Nm of torque (some 50Nm more than a Suzuki Hayabusa) that goes from zero to 100km/h in around 3.5sec, it’s not hard to get off the line like you mean it. There’s no doubt that the Savic C-Series looks distinctive…

Jack Findlay was the privateer’s privateer – a man who epitomised the precarious existence of the band of self-funded, self-driven riders who peopled the grids of European road racing during the 1960s as part of the “Continental Circus”. Immortalised in the 1968 documentary of the same name, Findlay was accurately depicted as the underdog hero battling against the might of Honda and MV Agusta. Born in 1935 in Mooroopna, in central Victoria, he moved to Europe in 1958, and by 1962 was racing the iconic McIntyre Matchless G50. He finished third in the 1966 500cc World Championship and second in 1968, always just behind Giacomo Agostini and Mike Hailwood. But whereas several of his Circus companions were blessed with lucrative Japanese factory contracts, Findlay seemed to be the forgotten man…

In sitting down to write this, I’ve tried hard not to make it all about me – rather, a reflection of the years I’ve been contributing, and even back to my first memories of watching the sport. I must say, I do feel pride in having been part of AMCN for 50 years. Ask anyone with no interest in the motorcycle world what are the longest continually published magazines in Australia and very few would realise the prominent position AMCN holds in that list. And worldwide, among motorcycling publications, AMCN still holds a highly regarded place. Its longevity and respected status is a reward for a hard-working but constantly changing – and shrinking in numbers – team that has now kept churning out the magazine on a regular basis for…

Australian electric motorcycle company Savic has delivered its first production units of the C-Series Alpha to customers in Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. It has also leased a 1200sqm factory space in China’s Zhejiang province, near Shanghai, to produce the C-Series powertrain unit and speed up the assembly process. Savic says this powertrain has “unique scalability” and is “capable of serving a variety of future vehicles”. This powertrain consists of the battery pack, electric motor and controller, along with its principal software and electronics systems. The C-Series Alpha, the first commercial vehicle produced in Melbourne since the closure of Ford, Holden and Toyota car plants eight years ago, has been designed in Australia. Final assembly is undertaken in Melbourne using both in-house-designed components and ones sourced from overseas. Pricing starts from…

MICHAEL DUNLOP continued his record run at the Isle of Man TT with two double wins in the Supersport and Supertwins races to bring his career total to 33 along with 51 podiums. In a TT severely affected by wild weather, he made the podium in all of his races, finishing second in the Superbike race and backing that up with two thirds in the Superstock races after battling issues on his BMW. Ahead of the final Senior race, the 36-year-old shrugged off the disappointment, saying: “We’ll just keep going and see what we’re made of.” Following long delays, the Senior, the blue riband event held over six laps, was abandoned due to windy conditions after riders had completed a sighting lap. After acrimony at Ireland’s North West 200 in the…

THE STAND-OFF between Jorge Martin and Aprilia continues, after the reigning world champion sensationally said he would exercise his right to get out of his contract at the close of 2025. The Spaniard and factory are at loggerheads over a clause in Martin’s contract that would give him autonomy to leave at the close of 2025 if certain performance levels are not met. “When I made the decision to change manufacturers last year, one of my premises was to have the possibility to test the bike in real circumstances and to understand the team and its working methodology,” said Martin in a statement post Silverstone. “In this way I could feel comfortable signing for two years instead of one, and so we included that condition. Faced with the situation of…

EVEN BY APRILIA standards, this has been a period of extreme chaos. Jorge Martin (Aprilia Racing), its injured lead rider, is pushing to get out of his contract a year early. Communication between rider and factory has broken down. And Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia Racing) took the most unexpected of wins in a wild Silverstone encounter. Bezzecchi’s recent run of ninth, 14th and 14th in the previous three Sundays did little to suggest this victory was coming. Nor did his qualifying performance of 10th. Yet an inspired tyre gamble and a large chunk of luck meant Ducati failed to win two MotoGP races on the trot for the first time since October 2022. Yes, 2022! The victory couldn’t have been better timed for Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivola. As the Martin saga rumbled…

THE INTRODUCTION of a Pro Enduro Title into the revamped Australian Off-Road Championships has verified Daniel Milner as Australia’s pre-eminent enduro rider of the past decade, with outright victory in almost 90 per cent of all events contested since his return from the US in 2016. The supremacy of the DM31 KTM Team appeared set to continue this year, although that was until Wil Ruprecht returned home with an E2 Enduro World Championship Trophy in his swag, immediately signing up with Yamaha. For the first four rounds of the year, Milner and Ruprecht swapped special test times, with Milner edging four points ahead by the time the teams arrived at Tintinara in south-east SA, a venue even drier than usual in drought. Milner (KTM) won the hole-shot for Saturday’s cross-country…

Don’t get me wrong, riding superbikes on the street is fun, but riding them on the track is a whole different ballgame. You can literally ride as fast as you want. With this is mind, BMW let us cut loose on the 2025 S 1000 RR range at Sydney Motorsport Park – and it was the perfect way to experience these bikes in their natural habitat. BMW is no stranger to the idea of letting punters cut loose on their bikes either. Hell, the fleet of hire bikes available at Sydney Motorsport Park Ride Days are BMW S 1000 RR weapons. For good reason, too; they are reliable, fast and very easy to ride if they are in the right mode thanks to their top shelf electronics. The 2025 model…

The moment I realise why Jon Munn has been so successful in the classic bike game doesn’t come while he’s telling stories about his title-winning drag racing days, or while we’re weaving through the rows of rare machines in his Seaford warehouse, 40-odd kays south-east of Melbourne. It comes in the final five minutes of our hours-long interview. Half a dozen people have wandered into the warehouse, meandering through the scores of classic and collectible motorcycles, pointing and talking to one another as they would in a museum or gallery, rather than with the intent to buy. It turns out one of the couples has made the trip to Classic Style Motorcycles to pick Jon’s brain. The wife has a photo on her phone of her recently deceased father sitting…

“AFTER A FULL DAY OF LAUGHS, TESTING, MEDIA AND INTERVIEWS, IT WAS STRAIGHT TO THE AIRPORT TO FLY HOME AND GET BACK TO WORK” THERE’S BEEN A wide variety of things going on in the Tarzy-verse lately! Let’s start where we left off – heading to Queensland for what the team and I call the start of the “ultimate national traveller” rounds, far from little Adelaide. We were welcomed with sunny skies for Round 3 of ASBK at Queensland Raceway, aka ‘the Paperclip’. Friday’s practice day went great, thanks to the many laps I’d done a few weeks earlier at the Southern Downs State round. That meant no messing around with set-up – suspension, gearing or anything else. I finished P1 in FP1 and FP2, and P3 in FP3. With…

1 BOOTS ’N’ ALL Cassons $249.95 | $199.95 (02) 8882 1900 cassons.com.au Beat the winter chill with RJAYS 2025 winter collection. The Sprint boot (left) is built for speed demons with a love for toe sliders and shin armour. Microfibre upper, flex zones and CE approval – basically a race boot in superhero cosplay. The Highway III is leather-clad, waterproof and reflective – perfect for commuters who fear puddles more than potholes. 2 RACE READY Link International From $129 (07) 3382 5000  linkit.com.au Unleash your inner racer with Vortex Rear Sprockets – engineered in the US of A by people who live life in the fast lane (literally). Made from aircraft-grade 7075 T6 aluminium, these beauties are so precise they might just realign your chakras. Less weight, more zoom. Available…