YZF-R7! YAMAHA RIPS COVERS OFF NEW SUPERSPORT TWIN!

FULL
FACTORY!
Thrashing Aprilia’s
new 2021 V4 Tuono
ar
An
be

EXCLUSIV
INTERVIE

OUR
OMEGROW
HEROES
TAKING TH
GP WORLD
BY STORM

“PEOPLE
THINK I
HERE
OF

How Sir Al helped Back to back on the

launch the TRX850 old and new ’Busa

PLUS COLUMN: JACK MILLER // HOW TO: CHUCK A U-EY! // TECH: TURBOS MAKE COMEBACK
5
 OVES

ADIES
 ’Busa-
fest

tents
27 MAY – 9 JUNE 2021/ VOL 70/ №23
The only Gen
III Hayabusa in
→
the land and we
fang it at PI
pg 34
THIS IS WHERE YOU START

Ridden/Tested

34 BIRD OF PLAY
We chucked a leg over Suzuki’s new Hayabusa

40 YOU BEAUTY!
Aprilia’s Tuono V4 Factory; Supernaked superstar 50
Features

50 GIVE US A BOOST
After a false start in the 1980s manufacturers are
embracing forced induction again. Here’s why

60 OVER ACHIEVER
Our man Cathcart joined forces with Yamaha and
Over Racing 25 years ago to break some V-twin hearts

70 CHASING THE GOLDEN TICKET

EXCLUSIVE: Remy Gardner speaks out about being
the son of a World Champ and his MotoGP future

Sport

96 MOTOGP RD 5
Jumpin’ Jack Flash – and a GasGas gas

100 WORLDSBK RD 1
Rea gets his ton, Redding gets his tyres right

Cover story

AUSSIE RULES!
Jack Miller and Remy Gardner are lighting
up MotoGP and Moto2 with wins and title-
contending performances
 amcn.com.au
Regulars

10 News/14 Briefs/18 Headcheck/21 Access/ 26 Readers Ride/28 Quiz/

30 Living With/80 Secondhand/ 82 How To/ 84 AMCN Rides/86 Top Gear/
91 Old School/92 Rev Racer/95 In Pit Lane/113 Where Are They Now?/114 Gassit

60 70

“IT HAS A VOICE

WHICH WOULD PUT
PAVAROTTI
TO SHAME!”

40
 ed’s desk
DEAN MELLOR
EDITORIAL
Editor: Dean Mellor

Super exciting stuff

Deputy Editor: Kel Buckley
Sub Editor: Phil Branagan
News Editor: Hamish Cooper
Staff Journalist: Pete Vorst
Founding Editor: George Lynn

WATCHING THE FIRST round of the Superbike World Championship on DESIGN

Art Director: Paul Andrews
Saturday night, I was soon thinking that Murray Hayes had hit the nail Designer: Joe Ferrara

on the head in his letter Stumped by Supers (Access, Vol 70 No 22) in CONTRIBUTORS
Sir Alan Cathcart, Michael Scott,
which he lamented WSBK “lacks so much of what I love about MotoGP”. Ben Purvis, Mat Oxley, Neil Morrison,
Gold & Goose, Gordon Ritchie, Paul Young,
There was six-time world champion Jonathan Rea out in front again, Peter Whitaker, Don Cox
AND NOT FORGETTING
giving the field a masterclass on racing a Superbike. After earlier blitzing Darryl Flack, Neil Spalding,
Simon O’Leary, Peter Baker,
the Superpole session, Rea made Race 1 look easy, with the only real Josh Evans & Phillip Tooth
threat seemingly his teammate Alex Lowes in the early stages. PRODUCTION
Production Manager: Ian Scott
Sure, Murray reckons Rea’s domination isn’t the only factor in WSBK Advertising Co-ordinator: Yang Zhou

lacking the ‘sparkle’ of MotoGP, but it sure is a part of it. ADVERTISING

National Sales Manager: Dale Johnson
Then Sunday night changed everything, thanks to Scott Redding’s dale.johnson@amcn.com.au
0403 743 587
ballsy gamble to run slicks on a still damp Aragon track. Of
Qld Sales Manager: Todd Anderson
course, Garrett Gerloff almost taking Rea out added to todd@motormedia.com.au
0409 630 733
the drama, but there’s no doubt Redding would’ve MANAGEMENT

It’s been a still won the race even without Gerloff’s ‘help’. Citrus Media
Publisher: Jim Flynn
By Lap 5 things were getting exciting, with 0449 801 899 jim@citrusmedia.com.au

bloody long Redding ready to pounce on Rea, Michael van

Accounts: accounts@citrusmedia.com.au
CONTACT AMCN

journey to get
Australian Motorcycle News
der Mark, Lowes and Toprak Razgatlioglu; yep, A: PO Box 222, Earlwood, NSW, 2206
P: (02) 9186 9186
that’s four different manufacturers in the top five
where he is
E: amcn@amcn.com.au
ISSN: 1320-2103
positions, all jostling for the advantage.

right now
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Once Redding was through though, the race for Six months/13 issues: $79.95 (inc GST)
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Rea picked up the pieces to finish in second ahead of (02) 8227 6486
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Published by Citrus Media ABN 28 137 759 043,
weekend than anyone could’ve thought after Saturday night’s more Level 2, 173-179 Broadway, Ultimo, Sydney NSW 2007
© 2021 All rights reserved.
predictable result.
Printed in Australia by IVE
But when it comes to excitement the Superbikes were still not a patch
Material contained in AMCN is protected under the
on MotoGP in Le Mans! I could go into the details here but I reckon you’d Commonwealth Copyright Act 1968 and may not be
reproduced in part or whole without written consent from
be better off flicking to pages 92-93 to read about it in Jack’s own words. the copyright holders.

And how about Remy Gardner?! Still on top of the Moto2 Distributed by Ovato Retail Distribution.
*$9.95 maximum and recommended retail price only.
Championship after five rounds! It’s been a bloody long journey to get
where he is right now, and you can check out his story starting page 70.
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20154, World Square, NSW, 2002
the know YAMAHA HAS BROUGHT
back one of its most famous
model names to create the
IT HAPPENED SINCE LAST ISSUE 2022 YZF-R7. Based on the
MT-07 nakedbike, Yamaha
says it bridges the gap
Yamaha’s
between the entry-level R3
and its R1 Superbike.
There will be controversy
YZF-R7 signals
over whether the new R7 is
worthy of the legendary name
it bears but seen in isolation
new era
there’s no question that it’s an
impressive-looking new model.
Although comparisons will
inevitably be drawn with
Aprilia’s RS660 – another
similarly sized parallel twin
that also aims to revive the
f lagging supersports market
– the Yamaha is a much
cheaper machine to buy.
Heavily based on the
existing MT-07 nakedbike,
and so closely aligned to
the likes of Kawasaki’s
Ninja 650, it has a track-
ready appearance that uses
Yamaha has assigned
the famed R7 moniker to
its new twin sportsbike
A LSO I N T H I S I S S U E E XCLU S I V E : RE M Y
THE WHEELS ON
THE ’BUSA GO…
First local ride on Suzuki’s latest missile
34 LIVING THE LIFE
OF A RISING SON
Gardner 2.0 on what really happened at…
→ →
elements of World Superbike
and MotoGP tech and styling.
The chassis and ‘CP2’
689cc parallel twin
engine, with its 270-degree
crankshaft to replicate the
firing interval of a 90-degree
V-twin, are carried across
from the MT-07. That means
the power output of 54kW
(72hp) at 8750rpm and
torque of 67Nm at 6000rpm
is identical, but the two bikes
will feel distinctly different
to ride thanks to a host of
other changes.
Yamaha says the engine
has a new ECU specification,
changes to the intake
ducts and exhaust and
new injection settings, but
more notably the R7 uses
lower gearing for better
acceleration. It’s not at
the expense of top speed,
either, since the faired
bike’s aerodynamics give it
a 15-20km/h advantage over
S PE AKS
70

A LAMS
VERSION,
TOO!
YAMAHA AUSTRALIA WILL also
off er a restricted version to fall
within the requirements of the
Australian Learner Approved
Motorcycle Scheme (LAMS).
Using a 655cc parallel-twin
rather than the high-output
689cc engine, it makes 38kW
(52hp) at 8000rpm and 58Nm of
torque at 4000rpm.
Priced at $13,999 (ride away)
and is due to land in Aussie
dealers in December this year.
the naked model.
Other changes include
a new assist-and-slipper
clutch and an optional
up-only quickshifter.
The frame is the sa e
HA M I SH ’ S LI BR A RY
OF MICE AND MEN
[AND MOTORBIKES]
Grandpa Cooper remembers a passed author
upside-down fork, as well as while on-board there’s a new
a revised rear shock linkage LCD dash including a gear
and settings. Tweaked setup
means a steeper 23.7° fork
indicator and shift light.
Up front, the single LED
angle (the MT-07’s is 24.5°) ,
while the wheelbase is 5mm
headlight is tucked inside
the M1-style air intake.
shorter at 1395mm. Weight A 13-litre tank, fractionally
is 188kg, 4kg more than the smaller than the MT-07’s,
nakedbike. helps with the sporty riding
That fairing is notable position, as does the tapered
for its aggressive, MotoGP- seat, and there’s an optional
inspired style. Ergonomics pillion cover for the single-
are genuinely sporty, with low seat look. Other options
clip-ons and rear-set pegs. include a titanium Akrapovic
The compact nature of the pipe, LED turn signals and
CP2 engine also means the R7 various billet alloy parts.
is particularly slim – narrower The 689cc sportsbike will
than the R3 and even the R125 be priced at $14,999 ride
– to get a small frontal area away and Australia won’t get
that assists top speed. any until December.
The 10-spoke wheels come BEN PURVIS
from the MT-07 but gain a
wider 180-section rear tyre
to further boost the R7’s
r iv n
arallel-twin 689cc motor is good for
4kW (72hp) at 8750rpm and torque of
7Nm at 6000rpm
new fully adjustable 41mm upside-
own fork set at a steeper steering
ngle than the MT-07
weighs 4kg more than the nakedbike
t 188kg fully fuelled but has a 5mm
horter wheelbase at 1395mm
hile US dealers will get their stock
June and Europe will get theirs four
onths later in October, Australia has
o wait until December
Squint, blur… yep,
that’s the basis of
an SSP racer
S PO RT S TA RT S PAG E
91 ASBK REJIGS
CALENDAR
Series finale set for return to Phillip Island
→ →
COMMENT
Hamish Cooper
Why it had to be called an R7
THE MORE YOU think about it the
more it makes sense. Yamaha
had to do something radical to
get back into the new Supersport
market, which is now embracing
twins and triples.
Yamaha says it is offering “a
mid-level option for both new
riders looking to grow into a more
powerful motorcycle, as well
as experienced riders seeking
a fully-faired motorcycle with
Supersport performance that fits
within their budget”.
To make an impact Yamaha
needed a name linked to an earlier
hero model. Reviving the TRX850
seemed an obvious choice but
that model was always a budget
eff ort and never set hearts racing
like the original R7.
Just 500 of these super-exotic,
four-cylinder, 750cc Superbike
contenders were made in 1999.
Yamaha quickly pulled the pin on
the project after a controversial
drug conviction derailed factory
rider Noriyuki Haga’s run to
almost certain championship
victory in 2000.
The Japanese giant is in for the
long haul this time with the R7. I
could even see a larger version
emerge using the triple engine of
the MT-09.
With Aprilia setting the
standard, and highest price,
Yamaha has cleverly come in
with a budget-priced model that
bristles with the aggressive looks
of its MotoGP racers.
And that image is just what the
emerging middle-classes of the
booming Asia-Pacifi c markets are
demanding. It will also appeal to
Australian riders who are tired of
the impracticality of a full-blown
Superbike that sits on the speed
limit in third gear with the engine
barely off idle.
96
109
 the
w
DUCATI IS HARD at
work track testing a new
derivative of the Multistrada
V4 sporting a single-sided
swingarm that will be a
straight off the Panigale V4 S.
Notice the Brembo Stylema
brake calipers, 330mm discs
and Öhlins NIX-30 fork,
as well as the forged alloy

Mystery
range-topping version of its
super-adventure model.
It’s possible this will
Marchesini wheels.
If this is the planned
Multistrada V4 Pikes Peak,
then its engine spec is

Multistrada
become the long-expected
Multistrada V4 Pikes Peak
model, already type-
approved in American EPA
expected to be the same
1158cc four as the normal
Multistrada V4 – that’s what’s

V4
emissions listings alongside listed on the American

Single-sided swingarm
the normal Multistrada V4
and V4 S models.
version a road weapon? Like the Multistrada
1260 Pikes Peak, the new
single-sided swingarm V4
Ducati’s Pikes Peak
looks like one we uses alloy wheels and road-
want to test… oriented rubber. The fact it
was caught testing on a race
track is also notable, as for
all its ‘adventure’ styling,
it’s designed to go fast on
asphalt above all.
There is a 17-inch front
wheel instead of the normal
V4’s 19-incher and the entire
front end appears to be
emissions documents. But
it could also be a different,
higher-performance model
altogether.
The ‘Pikes Peak’ name
isn’t as suited to the V4 as
to the previous Multistrada
super-twin. And motorcycles
have been banned from
competing at the famous
Colorado hillclimb following
the death of four-time
winner Carlin Dunne in
2019 riding a prototype
Ducati Streetfighter V4.
BEN PURVIS

S P I E D!
WTF?! SEATBELTS FOR BIKES?
ITALIAN ENGINEERING AND Seatbelts on
design firm Italdesign has motorcycles?
patented an intelligent Yeah, nah or
motorcycle seatbelt system nah, yeah?
intended to operate in certain
types of accident. It reckons it
will work best in the sort of crash
where a car pulls out in front of a
rider. Instead of being catapulted
over the car’s roof or straight
into its side, remaining on the
bike would allow it to absorb the
impact and protect the rider.
Italdesign’s idea is to add a rigid,
shell-like backrest to a motorcycle
or scooter, with shoulder straps
and a waist belt holding it into

12 amcn.com.au
 PRODUCT SAFETY
BMW PLANS A
CARBON FRAME
AS WELL AS dabbling with structural carbon-fibre
components on its HP4 Race track-only superbike,
BMW is looking to apply the tech to some of its
RECALLROSTER
Check if your motorcycle is
affected by this recent recall
road models. It has filed a patent application that
shows a new method to use carbon on motorcycle MODEL 2018 Suzuki GSX250F
frames without the cost and production problems IMPORTER Suzuki Australia
associated with a full carbon-fibre chassis. Pty Ltd
Using the latest S 1000 RR’s aluminium frame for NUMBER OF AFFECTED
the basis of the patent illustrations, BMW’s latest MOTORCYCLES 359
idea is to use bolt-on carbon fibre panels to increase ISSUE The headlamp bulb
and tune chassis rigidity. thread may vibrate during
Carbon panels are already used in MotoGP, bonded strategically onto aluminium frames, certain engine speeds and
positioning them strategically to tune the flex. BMW differs by using bolt-on carbon parts that allow may cause a headlamp to blow
for easier production and can be changed to alter a bike’s behaviour. POTENTIAL
It also means the alloy components can be thinner and lighter, while avoiding the need to weld HAZARD Reduced visibility,
strengthening bracing into a chassis. creating a risk of accident
This project has legs because BMW already mass-produces structural carbon parts for its cars, ACTION REQUIRED Contact
including complete chassis for the i3 and i8 models. BP your nearest Suzuki dealer for
remedial action

HARLEY LiveWire has been

spun off to its own

GOES LIVE
brand by H-D

ACTING QUICKLY AFTER hiring Ford’s

Jim Farley, who spent $US22b electrifying
the automaker’s lineup, Harley-Davidson
has turned the LiveWire into its own
standalone brand. MODEL 2021 Honda CRF450R
With virtual headquarters based in IMPORTER Honda MPE Pty
Silicon Valley, California, and Milkwaukee, Ltd
Wisconsin, the new entity will reveal its NUMBER OF AFFECTED
first model at July’s International Motor MOTORCYCLES 550
Show in California. ISSUE Due to a manufacturing
H-D sees its electric-only brand as an fault, the motorcycle’s
opportunity to lead a new emerging market. With many capital cities around the world planning to ban drive chain joining link may
combustion engines by 2030 momentum is building. dislodge, which can cause the
Ford is another American giant committed to EVs, with its recently announced F150 Lightning pickup chain to detach from the rear
truck just the start of a program to bring electric vehicles into the mainstream by 2025. sprocket
H-D’s chairman, president and CEO Jochen Zeitz is on a similar mission. POTENTIAL
“LiveWire will pioneer the future of motorcycling, for the pursuit of urban adventure and beyond,” he HAZARD Possible loss of
said last week. “LiveWire also plans to innovate and develop technology that will be applicable to Harley- vehicle control, creating a risk
Davidson electric motorcycles in the future.” of accident
An obvious precedent for a mainstream manufacturer hiving off a brand into its own entity is Ducati’s ACTION REQUIRED Contact
Scrambler sub-brand, which quickly became a corporate success story after its launch in 2015. your nearest Honda dealer for
HAMISH COOPER remedial action

place on the rider. The backrest

is mounted on a ball joint, so it
moves slightly with the rider.
A quick-release mechanism,
operated by an on-board
computer and sensors, would
release the backrest instantly in
the event of an accident where it
would be safer to get away from
the bike, such as a slide down
the road.
Italdesign’s illustrations
show the system on a scooter-
style bike, which makes more
sense than a sportsbike as
scooter riders aren’t likely to
move around in their seats as
much and many of them come
to two wheels from cars. They
might even be reassured by the
presence of belts. BP

amcn.com.au 13
 the
w
know?
Briefs YOUR QUICK FIX
eM
weekend across all three
classes
“IT’S BEEN Life lesson
AN INTENSE After two MotoGP
victories in succession
Jack Miller says his
WEEKEND FOR ME winning streak is due to
his confidence building
up momentum. Read his
AND MY FAMILY, column on page 93
Fans are
BUT LUCKILY I’M back
BSB testing at Oulton
Park and Donington see
OKAY AND I WILL fans allowed back in to
watch for the first time in
over a year
RECOVER”
Three-time world Superbike
champion Troy Bayliss after
suffering a C4 vertebrae fracture
in a road accident on his bicycle. AMCN’S
THERMOMETER
Seven
months
for R7
The US will get their
hands on Yamaha’s
new middleweight
sportsbike as early as
next month while we’re
forced to wait until
December
Family
tragedy
A grieving mother
in Colorado, US, has
died after crashing
her motorcycle during
a memorial ride for
her son, who died in a
motorcycle accident
last month
14 amcn.com.au
In 2012, when Casey Stoner won two
Did MotoGPs on the trot, he went on to win
you → another three, including Phillip Island
for the sixth time in a row, to finish third
overall for Honda
DOVI’S DRAGSTER
It might date back to 1995 but the Italjet
Dragster is still the sexiest scooter out
there. And now MotoGP’s crowd favourite
Andrea Dovizioso has jumped on board,
becoming a brand ambassador for an
upcoming version. It’s the latest project he’s
undertaken in his ‘gap year’ from MotoGP
and, like his efforts with Aprilia, he will be
testing it on the track and road.
FUND AND FIND BOOKS
Long-time AMCN photographic contributor
Phil Aynsley is seeking crowdfunding for his
latest publishing project. He is embarking on
500cc Grand Prix Motorcycles: The 2-Stroke
Era, A Photographic Tribute and details of how
to support this project are at kickstarter.com.
Meanwhile, Dave Plunkett is distributing a
book written by f lamboyant Kiwi speedway
rider Bruce Cribb called Cribby Story Book
– the world’s fastest Maori . All proceeds
go to the Speedway Riders Benevolent
Fund. It is available in Australia for $28.75
(including postage) from Dave Plunkett at
davejplunkett@hotmail.com
UP AND AT ’EM
Motorcycle training school Stay Upright has partnered with
motorcycle dealership group TeamMoto and MCAS to give novice
riders a ‘one stop shop’ dedicated to improving motorcycle safety
on Queensland roads. It involves a purpose-built motorcycle
training centre at Coopers Plains and rider discounts on a range of
products and services at TeamMoto and MCAS stores.
BE A
SIGN-UP TO WIN!
WINNER
To ce ebrate the aunch of MotoGP™21
AMCN is reward ng five e newsletter subscribers with a copy of th s game!
A l you have to do is subscribe to the AMCN E News etter to be in the draw it s that s mple
To celebrate the launch of
MotoGP™21, AMCN is giving five
e-newsletter subscribers the chance
to win a copy of the game. All you
Winners Drawn
have to do is subscribe to the AMCN
Thursday 1 July 2021 amcn.com.au/amcn-com-au-subscribe/
E-Newsletter to be in the draw – it’s
that simple.
 the
w

The bike
that
created
a legend
This year marks the 40th
anniversary of the passing
of Ken Blake
THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY Ken Blake with his Jim Scaysbrook fires up
of Australian racing legend Triumph in the first the Jesser Triumph in 2014
Ken Blake’s death at the Isle few months of his
of Man TT will be honoured racing career
in Melbourne on 9 June, with
the Triumph on which he
started racing taking centre
stage. Blake’s 1964 Triumph
Bonneville will be on display
for the first time since 2014 at
the Laurel Hotel in Ascot Vale.
At the age of 20, Blake
took the skills he acquired
through fast road rides in
the Adelaide Hills to Mallala
racetrack in 1966. Riding
his lightly modified 1964
Triumph Bonneville 650 he
was soon running at the front Triumph won Australia’s France. He’d openly expressed
of the field.
His talent was quickly
biggest road race of the
1969 season, the Australian KENBLAKE thoughts of retiring but that
contract inspired him to give
recognised by local tuners
Les and Dean Jesser. The
Unlimited TT at Surfers
Paradise. Blake’s last major 40THANNIVERSARY it another go.
As a lead-up he went to the
team, including frame
engineer Ivan Ardill, who
victory on the Jesser Triumph
was the 1970 Australian TT at MEMORIAL Isle of Man TT again. Racing
his four-year-old Yamaha
braced the chassis and
sharpened the steering
head angle, and John Lord,
Phillip Island, where he beat
several TR3s. LUNCHEON
Wednesday 9 June 2021,
TZ350 in the Senior TT he
was forced to start from
the rear of the grid after a
Soon after, his life changed
who made up the fibreglass when Melbourne motorcycle from 12.30pm carburettor float valve stuck
bodywork, soon achieved Laurel Hotel, open. In typical Blake style,
identity Ron Angel signed
289 Mt Alexander Rd,
Australia-wide fame through him to the first official and in changeable weather
Ascot Vale
a series of big race wins. Australian Kawasaki race Free entry conditions, he carved his
An indication of the team. Blake created another Drinks and food way through more than 100
thousands of kilometres legend when he won the at bar prices competitors to reach eighth
travelled to meetings is the Castrol Six Hour, Australia’s place going into the final lap.
paint scheme, inspired by the premiere production race, followed by his third Castrol A few kilometres down the
colours of the Golden Fleece riding solo in 1973 on a Six Hour win the next year, road he aquaplaned on a wet
service stations the team newly-released Z1 Kawasaki. set him on a path to Europe patch of road at Ballagery and
refuelled at on their long He then beat Giacomo and the Isle of Man, aged 32, was killed instantly. Blake’s
interstate journeys. Agostini on a factory MV in 1978. body was cremated on the
Eventually taken out to Agusta at the Laverton TT in He had several modestly island and his ashes flown
730cc and running on a nitro/ 1976, riding the first square- successful years as a back to Australia for a huge
methanol fuel mix, what was four RG500 Suzuki brought privateer and in 1981 was memorial service.
now referred to as the Jesser into Australia. That victory, offered a contract with Honda HAMISH COOPER

16 amcn.com.au
husqvarna-motorcycles.com

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easy shift gearbox 320mm BYBRE brakes 44hp and 37nm of torque

V i t p i l e n
M Y 2 1
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Ride your
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How you twist the throttle, how far
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$ 7, 3 2 5 Ride Away
17” Spoked wheels
 the
w
Headcheck

The year was...

3
The events of 9-11 just a week
before the Milan Motorcycle
show opened cast a
shadow over the event, and
understandably meant a near-
total absence of American
visitors and Japanese
manufacturer bigwigs. Despite
that, there was still plenty of
now-classic metal on display…

SPORT
In just his second year on
the international road racing After the fracas that ensued at the Catalan GP on
AMCN Vol 51 No 07
circuit, Andrew Pitt clinched the 17 June 2001 between Valentino Rossi and Max
148 pages, $5.50
Supersport World Championship Biaggi, after which Max appeared at the post-race
On sale 12 – 25 Oct 2001
at the fi nal round in Italy. Pitt, presser with claret coming from his nose, we thought
Editor Ken Wootton
the 1999 Aussie Supersport we better give the frumpy looking Italian a chance to
champion, became the fi rst put his slant on his battle with his arch-rival.
Aussie to win a Supersport World
Championship, despite not
winning any of the 11 races. He
pipped Paolo Casoli for the title by “IT’S NOT LIKE A PRODUCTION BIKE,
WHERE EVERYONE CAN RIDE IT AT
just two points, after the Italian –
who led the Championship going into the fi nal round –
chucked his Yamaha down the road.
He
PIC OF THE LIMIT. WHEN THE TYRES GO OFF said
that?
THE ISSUE AFTER 10 LAPS, IT’S GOING TO NEED
FINESSE, AND ONLY A FEW PEOPLE WILL
This is Ruben
Xaus relieving
himself in front

BE ABLE TO RIDE IT PROPERLY. THAT’S THE

of an audience
at the final
round of the

WAY IT’S ALWAYS BEEN WITH GP BIKES,

WorldSBK
championship in
Italy. Talk about
stage fright!

AND THAT’S THE WAY IT SHOULD BE”

Mick Doohan commenting after taking Honda’s new RC211V for a bunch of demo
laps at the Pacific GP in Motegi.

18 amcn.com.au
 0% ACROSS THE MY19 & MY20 FTR 1200 RANGE
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OGIO Excelsior
etter
f the
→
sue
letter, via post or email. Long letters will be cut
to fit, so don’t ramble. The views expressed by
readers are not necessarily those of the editor.
Fair dink’em
Over the last several issues
of AMCN I noticed that many
of the bikes featured have
no pillion seat at all and the
few that do are often rated
“immediately hopped off
and walked away laughing,”
as per Pete’s better half
referring to the Harley-
Davidson Street Bob (AMCN
Vol 70 No 19).
I can’t be the only rider
out there who regularly
enjoys carrying a passenger,
so how about a feature on
“I found his thoughts on being at Ducati extra interesting –
fingers crossed our Jack doesn’t suffer the same fate”
Racer fate
Cracking story on Peter
Williams (AMCN Vol 70
No 14)! I saw Mr Williams
race at Ontario Motor
Speedway in California back
in the early 1970s.
Please keep publishing
these stories on racers – I
look forward to each one.
Elam Blacktree
via email
Bologna bullets
Just wanted to say a quick
thanks for the article on
Casey Stoner (AMCN Vol 70
No 21) in the last issue; it’s
always great to get a bit of
inside info on people that
have achieved so much! I
found his thoughts on being
at Ducati extra interesting
– fingers crossed our Jack
doesn’t suffer the same fate.
Viva Miller!
Scott Hills
Croydon NSW
Arse about
I just wanted to point out
you got a fact wrong in
your recent edition with
access
Win OGIO’s ultra-padded
air-mesh backpack
valued at $79.95!
Include your full name and address in your
AIR YOUR THOUGHTS OR VENT YOUR SPLEEN
Access, AMCN, PO Box 6, Bittern, Vic, 3918
access@amcn.com.au
Letter of the issue
the best bikes for pillions
Ange much preferred
in the various categories
the Kato’s perch to
and capacities? Do such
the H-D’s
bikes still exist or have they,
too, become victims of the
industry’s misogyny?
Mark White
Bull Creek, WA
Remember when
sportsbikes even had
decent pillion seats? If my
old ’96 Blade didn’t have a
comfy rear pew I probably
wouldn’t be a family man
today! Deano
→
the Casey Stoner interview
Peter Williams was (AMCN Vol 70 No 21).
often acclaimed Regarding the Jerez incident
as the finest GP in 2011, you reported that
racer/engineer of Stoner went into Valentino
modern times Rossi’s garage to tell him his
ambition outweighed his
talent, where it was Rossi
who went into Stoner’s
garage to ‘apologise’. It tells
the story a very different way
in my opinion.
Mitchell Radford
via email
Thanks for pointing
that out Mitchell, and
apologies for the error. It
sure does tell the story in a
different way. Deano
amcn.com.au 21
access
Your say
Arse kicker
Great story on Stoner who
was a mind-blowing racing
force and who amazingly
still gets trolled for having
the audacity to arrive in
MotoGP and slay like he did.
Just like in AMCN’s inside
story, he ‘kicked Rossi’s
arse’. And if Valentino is the
GOAT like everyone says,
then that was some feat.
His 23 wins on that Ducati
were awe inspiring but Rossi
and his fans decided it was
all because of the Ducati’s
power and the Bridgestone
tyres. VR didn’t seem to like
a young Australian upstart
stealing his limelight and
thought he’d show everyone
how easy it was.
But instead, he found it
almost impossible to even
get a podium in his two
years onboard the Ducati,
even with that huge budget
increase.
It just shows that you can’t
argue with popularity. Well,
you can but you’d be wrong.
Johno Clarson
via email
Forest for
the trees
Jack Miller has won two
MotoGP races and you guys
have not mentioned him
in your write-ups. Very
disappointing.
Elie Tarazi
via email
Hey Elie, what magazine
are you reading? Jack
even made an appearance
on last issue’s cover.
Deano
Lost and waiting
I have a Harley-Davidson
Dyna Wide Glide. I have
ordered and paid for a new
set of keys for the bike as I
lost the other one – I asked
for ways around waiting as
bike would be off road, but
it’s not possible.
I have been given a few
22 amcn.com.au
NOW EVEN MORE
PLACES TO READ AMCN
Miller Magic “I cried like
Jack cried
It may have been the big week which preceded it or it may
have been the beers, but I cried when Jack Miller crossed
in Jerez
the line in Le Mans to become the first Aussie since Casey
Stoner to win back-to-back MotoGP races. I cried like Jack
two weeks
cried in Jerez two weeks earlier when he finally got the
factory-win monkey off his back.
earlier”
It was such a stressful race to watch – I can’t imagine
what it was like for Jack to actually ride in, let alone go
and win! It was an emotional rollercoaster – from seeing
→
Marquez leading a race and crashing – twice! – to seeing
Jack out in the gravel and thinking the victory was out
of reach. facing with global
I had to close my eyes when he took those long lap shipping and supply-
penalties with his knee on the deck and when he wobbled chain disruption due
his leg to signal to his team he was thinking about to Covid-19 is unlike
switching to a wet bike, I yelled at the TV wishing he anything we’ve ever
wouldn’t, and I reckon he must have heard me. experienced. As we
MotoGP is so awesome right now, I know exactly what navigate through the
Murray Hayes was talking about last issue ( Stumped by challenges, we are adeptly
Supers AMCN Vol 70 No 22), MotoGP literally gives me managing the effects of
butterflies in the stomach – heck, it makes me bloody cry! disruption, ensuring that
I’ll watch the World Supers this weekend, and I’ll enjoy it, we are able to continue
but I sure as hell know I won’t be reaching for the tissues. delivering quality parts
Jordy Bodle and accessories. Thank
via email you for your continued
patience as we worked
You weren’t the only one yelling at the telly, Jordy! through this situation
That race at Le Mans had absolutely everything, and to get back to regular
Jack’s performance was simply brilliant fulfillment of parts and
accessories.”
Jack Miller’s Le Mans
win had Jordy Bodle
in tears
Shipping news
Great news! AMCN
Vol 70 No 19 (1-14 April) has
just arrived on the shelf in
NZ today. It’s 14 May, so
we get it six weeks after it’s
published across the ditch.
This is now the typical
delivery delay in
New Zealand.
Is this really the best
your publisher and the
NZ distributors Gordon &
Gotch can do? It disrespects
the great effort you and
dates for supply – initially difficulties with suppliers, your team make to provide
three to four weeks, which I which is why there is a delay. timely news articles to us on
thought was bad enough, The keys, I am told, have a fortnightly basis. By the
but was told after four weeks to come from America and time we get it, the magazine
would be 14 May. And now I am told other parts are is already three issues
that date has arrived, I am difficult to get. behind and now half of it is
told 27 May! Gary Bentleigh old ‘news’. Can I suggest the
Waiting three months via email T-Clamps in these PC times?
(assuming they get here this Alan Lewis
time) for a set of keys with We contacted Harley, via email
no other option from H-D, I Gary. This is the reply:
think, is very poor. I was told “The situation companies Sorry Alan, there’s not a lot
that now they are having around the world are we can do to speed up NZ
 Kate Peck, centre,
is the host of The
AusMoto Show
distribution. We’ll get the
T-Clamps out. Deano
AusMoto woah
Well done to Motorcycling
Australia, the first episode
of The AusMoto Show was
brilliant. The interviews and
video highlights showcased
a wide variety of motorcycle
sport and riders.
Kate Peck is an
enthusiastic and
knowledgeable host and
I hope ratings are high
enough to create more than
the first five-part series.
Readers should watch/
record all episodes. SBS
did not have the show in its
newspaper TV guide, but I
found it on Fox Sports 506.
Maybe a free ad in AMCN?
Peter Longobardi
via email
Too right, Peter. It’s
fantastic to see Aussie
motorcycling take centre
stage on the box. Deano
Stop Beemer time John Simms
Just read John Rooth’s upgraded the brakes
column regarding his 1962 on his R69S
BMW R60 (AMCN Vol 70
No 22). I have attached a few
photos of my 1961 BMW
R69S, because he was saying
that he should be upgrading
the brakes.
I did this upgrade about
eight years ago. If John is
interested, I can supply all
the info of the parts used
and what I had to do.
John Simms
via email
I’ve spent 47 years
making my old girl go cut the job for me. I’ll be in
faster so maybe it’s time touch. Much appreciated,
to get some real brakes. and what a beautiful bike
Thanks John, that’d short you have there! Roothy
→
“Well done to MA, the first
episode of The AusMoto
Show was brilliant”
amcn.com.au 23
socials
Facebook Instagram @dap78x

@jeffevans1300

Post of
the issue
The notion of belting
oneself to your favourite
ride caused a tsunami of
comments from readers

#gsxs1000 #suzukim
otorcycles
#gixxes #streetbike
#gixxus
#biker #motorbike #i
nstabike
#gen3 #hayabu
Yes please Santa.
orcycles #daine
@peterstevensmot
#amcn_mag
→ Don’t Forget
#amcn_mag

Comment
of the Issue
Georgina Skene makes a point about
the notion of seatbelts on a motorbike

It’s a bit like going

fishing and instead
of putting a life
jacket on, you tie
the anchor to your
ankle, just in case

Reaching out
Want to see your pride and
joy featured in AMCN?
The only thing we love more than
writing about bikes is looking at your
bikes. Tag your social pics with @
aumotorcyclenews on Facebook or @
amcn_mag on Instagram, or fire them o
in an email to amcn@amcn.com.au
And don’t forget to tell us why you love it.

Get it off yer c

mething funny, new, old or wise to say or share? Do it!
www.facebook.com/aumotorcyclenews

AMCN’S WEBSITE IS THE PLACE TO BE!

Get all the latest motorcycle news and
reviews of your favourite bikes at amcn.com.au

24 amcn.com.au
 Introducing the all-new Meteor 350
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rides
YOUR BIKES
If it’s a paddock basher, a for-lifer
or a brand-spankin’ shiny new
one, we wanna see your bike!

I turned 70 in the
December just gone
so decided to buy
myself a present!
And here it is with
my best mate
keeping watch.
I have always had
fully faired Japanese
bikes and this is my
first nakedbike – I
am absolutely in
love with it and it
goes like stink! I
will buy another
bike when I turn
80. Loving life to
the max!
Martin Creek

Some of my girls. Andrew Mobbs

Covid times were tough. There have been some changes now, not all good ones.
Geoffrey Walter

Send Fred a photo of your bike, cos if he can’t ride as much as he’d
like to, he at least wants to be able to look at more bikes. Email your
picture to amcn@amcn.com.au and get it published in the mag!

26 amcn.com.au
 COLLECTION

2021

Race-R
Pro
Carbon Helmet

$999.95

SCAN ME!
FOR MORE
I N F O R M AT I O N
mental
twisties
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
Who better to feature in this issue’s
quiz than Townsville’s fi nest? Pick the
four changes we made to Jack Miller’s EMAIL YOUR NUMBERED ANSWERS
Ducati GP21, email ’em in and score TO AMCN@AMCN.COM.AU
yerself an AMCN neck sock for winter! FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN!

AL
ORIGIN

ANSWERS WILL BE REVEALED IN THE NEXT ISSUE

28 amcn.com.au
livingwith
Servicing Options added
Retail Distance Fuel First: 800km Mid-sized screen
price covered Economy Minor: 4000km Verex de-cat pipe
$24,995 ride away 5285km 6.06L/100km Major: 16,000km High Licence Plate mount

Take me W
e knew it was coming, just not
this soon. Our time with the
Indian was up and it was due

home
back to its Sydney warehouse.
Small problem though; I
swapped the FTR for a V-Strom in Mallacoota

country
(MCN Vol 70 No 18) and Kel then rode the FTR
to the Mornington Peninsula. From there it
was picked up by Phil, who took it deep into the
untamed (but leafy) streets in Melbourne’s east.
RIDER PROFILE
Name

road
It’s time to go, but the Indian
FTR is leaving us with a worn-
out fuel card, a depleted deck
of demerit points and most
of all fond memories of our
shenanigans over the past
eight months
WORDS PETE VORST
PHOTOGRAPHY PV & AMCN ARCHIVES
There was a solution. Perhaps not the most
practical of solutions, but surely a fitting farewell Pete Vorst
to what’s proved to be a largely practical big-bore Height 186cm
nakebike during our eight-month Living With Weight 104kg
period. I was flying to Phillip Island to ride the
new Hayabusa, surely I could strap three days’
worth of luggage, a large Alpinestars one-piece
race suit and other assorted junk on the small
pillion perch and ride it 1000km back to Sydney.
With a flea in my ear about the dangers of
kangaroos and fatigue from Kel, I rolled off Phillip
Island in the afternoon with about 30kg of luggage
strapped to the back and in the pouring rain.
Despite the small pillion perch, the generous
pillion grab handles, foot pegs and flat seat allow
you to strap a relatively large load on quite easily,
but it does impinge on the rider’s seating area, so I
had to jam myself between the tank and the bag –
much to the amusement of the gents from Suzuki.

30 amcn.com.au

2 3
4 5
I appeased my
range anxiety with
a stash of petrol in
a one-litre bottle
I made my way the 275km to Bairnsdale,
stopping twice for fuel and spending the night
before I found out for myself what all this talk of
the Bonang is about.
The Bonang Highway is 100-odd kays of twisty
goodness strewn with logging trucks with
drivers that don’t care too much for which side of
the road they should be on and make no attempt
to save you from spearing off a cliff by pulling
onto the appropriate side of the road. And for
good measure, there’s a solid section of dirt. The
tarmac section is god’s gift to motorcycles – it’s
a bit bumpy in places, but amazing. You ride
differently when you’re on your own and in a
remote area, because getting it wrong means
you’ll die alone down a fern-lined ditch – you
avoid high corner speeds and use a brake, point,
shoot approach and it’s one that plays to the
Pete’s
Tr ip
FTR’s strengths and weaknesses. The sporty
Sachs suspension combined with the 19-inch
front and 18-inch rear wheels fitted with Dunlop
DT3-R flattrack-style tyres means the FTR never
feels particularly stable cornering at a decent
clip. And its punchy 1203cc V-twin favours a
point-and-shoot method of cornering.
It’s 175km between fuel stops on the Bonang,
and with Phil running out at 164km (AMCN Vol
70 No 20) having not thrashed the FTR in my
head, combined with my inability not to thrash
the FTR up the Bonang, I appeased my range
anxiety with a stash of petrol in a bottle that just
that morning had contained one litre of Paul’s
1. Yep; you can tour on
full-cream goodness. It proved to be a smart an Indian FTR. Just tie
move, because I needed it and also rolled into the down your stuff carefully
servo at Bombala with the fuel light on. If you’re
2. The screen is the right
doing distance on a big V-twin like the FTR with height for Stormtroopers
a 13-litre tank, range anxiety is just something and Ewoks; a bit less so
you’re going to deal with. for Wookies
Once you reach Cooma, the fun is over and 3. Chunky rubber
it’s highway most of the way back to Sydney. I handles most conditions
reached Canberra right on peak hour, which let but is not quite the
me break up the monotony of the trip with some ultimate in stickiness
lane-splitting antics. 4. Yep; she gets a bit
The Hume Highway is a truly horrid road, grubby if you go off-road
it’s boring and littered with coppers. In this 5. A one-litre bottle can
scenario, the FTR’s cruise control is a blessing be your new best friend.
and, actually, so is the fact that you need to (That is petrol PV, right?)
amcn.com.au 31
livingwith
Indian FTR 1200 Race Replica

1 4

There’s nothing
stop for fuel regularly – especially when night
is falling and it’s getting bloody cold. Night’s

else like it and you’ll

arrival also reminded me just how great the
FTR’s headlight is; low beam gives a nice broad

get a lot of attention

spread and high beam is impressive.
Apart from a huge bag pushing my bits into

when you pull up

the tank and having to deal with the fuel issue, I
had a ball on my 1000-kilometre trip back from
the Island. It’s true what they say, the Bonang is
stunning, and the FTR ate it up almost as fast as
it sucked down the fuel.
Between us, we covered almost 5300km on handsome looks. Unfortunately the plan to fit
the FTR since September last year; it’s done a pannier rack and bag fell over when the rack
1. Already at AMCN we
everything from commuting to Sunday backroad went on back order. are reminiscing about
scratching and Saturday night hooning. We’ve We brief ly fitted an Australian-made Verex the FTR; Vorst gets the
toured on it, holidayed on it, gone camping with muff ler and then a Verex decat link pipe tyre spinning and dirty...
it, ridden logging roads, dirt roads, through mud (AMCN Vol 70 No 19) that does away with the 2. ... the screen, which
bogs, creek crossing and in torrential rain all large and heav y catalytic converter. The build installed like a beaut...
without a hitch. quality of both Verex products is stunning and
3. ... Bucko reaching for
We executed plans to fit a bunch of fit up was painless. The muff ler gave the FTR a the ground (almost made
accessories (AMCN Vol 70 No 15) – some good ferocious sound that is a bit too loud even with it, Kel)...
and some not-so good. The genuine Indian the removable dB-killer end-cap installed. The
4. ... Branners
screen (Vol 70 No 16) wasn’t a winner for decat cleans up the look of the FTR and saves a re-crunching the fuel
either Phil or I, channelling a blast of air at significant amount of weight, and we were so numbers in his head (get
our noggins creating lots of buffeting and happy with it we left it on for the remainder of up and start pushing,
wind noise. For Kel, on the other hand, who is our time with the FTR. old man)
substantially shorter than Phil and I (to be fair, Verex recommends that owners chuck it on We threw plenty at it,
most people are) found it quite effective. We all a dyno for a tune, but our FTR actually ran and it (and we) came
agreed that it diminishes the FTR’s unique and smoother with it on. back smiling

32 amcn.com.au
 Finally, we installed a numberplate
relocation kit (AMCN Vol 70 No 22) to move the
numberplate from down by the back wheel to the
undertail of the FTR. Installation can be fiddly
and time consuming and if you’re not handy on
the tools it might be worth getting your dealer to
do it, but we reckon the end result is worth both
the time and the cash.
It’s not all rainbows and cinnamon-scented
candles though. Getting fuel in the 13-litre tank
is painfully slow and it’s something you need to
do fairly often.
Kel, being vertically challenged, found it so
difficult to reach the sidestand due to the 840mm
seat height that, if she wasn’t wearing stretchy
jeans, she needed to ask for assistance when she
pulled up.
The touch screen TFT dash is on one hand easy
to see, and even easier to use, but on the other
takes forever to load, and if you connect your
phone via Bluetooth the system hijacks your
phone so you can no longer hear your music or
navigation through your intercom.
At $24,995 you shouldn’t have to deal with
rusty bits on your motorcycle, but the rotor bolts
and lever perch pinch bolts started rusting a
month or so into our time with the brand-new
FTR, even to the point that water dripping from
the rusty rotor bolts stained the wheels.
And last but not least: the fuelling. The
FTR runs rough and often stalls if it’s
completely warmed up. And even when THE
is up to temperature, the fuelling is so DETAIL
unrefined that it will even surge on C o s t, k
S
a
the highway with the cruise control c on s u y s a nd
activated. Total co m p t ion
Indian says it has addressed all of
s t o f a cces
these issues with the soon-to-arrive $ 2057.9sories fitted
Total ki 5
2021 FTR, so we’re really looking lometre
sc
forward to seeing if it has made a 5285 overed
really good bike really great. It also Average
fu
sports 17-inch wheels at both ends over the el consumptio
so not only will your steering be eight-m n
p er i od o nth
more direct when you’re on the pipe,
your choice of rubber will be much 6 . 5 L / 10 0 k
m
improved, too.
The FTR has won many a friend amo
AMCN staffers. Its engine is roaring fu t
the lazy American V-twin you might imagine. It
loves to rev and encourages you to do naughty
things. One of the big attractions of the FTR
though is it’s looks, there’s nothing else like it
and you’ll get a lot of attention wherever you
pull up. It’s a real hoon bike; powerful, nimble
and sexy, but with enough comfort that you can
enjoy the fruits of far-f lung places like the
Bonang Highway. Any wonder it claimed AMCN
Motorcycle of the Year honours in 2019.

amcn.com.au 33
quickspin TEST PETE VORST
PHOTOGRAPHY FOTO FIRST

2022 SUZUKI HAYABUSA GSX1300R

Bird of 1

Play
With less power and
less torque, can the
new Hayabusa live up
to its modern legend 2
status? Phillip Island
can answer that

I
t hasn’t rained in weeks, so the rain has
made the track slippery as hell,” one of
Suzuki Australia’s techs said as I rolled
out of pit garage number 49. I don’t know
if hell is a slippery place or not, but I didn’t
want to find out on my first trip to Phillip
Island for a ride around the famous circuit by
throwing a bike down the tarmac. And that bike
was the fresh Gen III Hayabusa, a modern icon

34 amcn.com.au
 FINISH LINE
The paint and quality of the
fit and fi nish is as good if not
better than any Japanese
bike at the price point – it
looks amazing in the fl esh

BRAKE THE RULES

New Brembo Stylema calipers
and a 10mm increase in front
rotor diameter have made a
vast improvement in braking
over the outgoing bike

FAMILIAR FACE
It looks completely diff erent
but there’s no mistaking it’s a
Hayabusa. The screen looks
small but combines with the
fairing to off er decent protection

A wet track, one 3

coming to terms with 145kW and 155Nm from a
266kg bike with bugger all in the way of electronic

Hayabusa and a aids while it hammered down with rain.

When you’re sitting in the pit garage staring

Phillip Island first-
timer – no pressure
of motorcycles. So fresh that the new ’Busa had
arrived in the country only days before my soggy
spin around the Island and it was the only one
on the continent. After I’d finished with it, it was
to go on show at various dealerships across the
country. A wet track, one Hayabusa and a Phillip
Island first-timer – no pressure.
So because Adam Child gave you the tech-laden
lowdown on the Gen III ’Busa a couple of issues
ago (AMCN Vol 70 No 20) and Suzuki was good
enough to bring a second-generation Hayabusa to
the Island, instead of finding different ways to tell
you about the same technical upgrades, I’m going
to try and explain the stark and subtle differences
when jumping between the two.
My first session was on the outgoing ’Busa and
I took it very easy on the first couple of laps as I
tried desperately to remember the track layout
from years of watching racing here, while also
1. Vorst puts on his
best brave face on his
Phillip Island debut
2. Design maintains
the ’Busa’s traditional
look but with all-new
bodywork
3. PV got to compare
back-to-back the new
model with a red Gen II
at the large and bulbous Hayabusa you could
be excused for thinking that you’ll be doing a
lot of muscle work to get the big bus around the
track. But those acres of aerodynamically shaped
plastics are deceptive. Once you’re seated on the
Hayabusa it feels much smaller than it looks and
the new generation version even more so.
Even by modern standards, the outgoing bike
is still maniacally fast, and handles far better
than its physically large size suggests it should.
When you chuck it into a corner you can tell you’re
on a heavy bike, but in the wet and challenging
conditions, being on a stable and well-mannered
brute like the Hayabusa is actually not a bad place
to be perched.
Thanks to the Gen II’s lack of electronic gizmos,
getting the power to the ground can be challenge.
And knocking it into rain mode takes the zap out
of the big girl, which is comforting, sure, but not as
much fun – especially when you’re getting smoked
down the straight by a gaggle of superbikes.
The Brembo front brakes are showing their age
– they still do the business okay, and are certainly
better than the Nissin-equipped early versions,

amcn.com.au 35
 quickspin
2022 SUZUKI HAYABUSA GSX1300R

1. New electronics made

the big ’Busa much less of
a handful on a wet track
2. Fit and finish of the
Gen III is the best we have
seen from Suzuki
3. That’s a big butt, and
we cannot lie
4. ’Bars are mounted
12mm closer to the rider
5. State of the art
Brembos are necessary,
and far better than on
older version
6. Dash combines
traditional clocks with
1 digital display in the
centre

but they lack power compared to the current crop

2
of top-shelf calipers from Brembo and Nissin.
I didn’t get a dry session on the outgoing
Hayabusa, and it would have been beaut to dial
in more of the Busa’s legendary power, but the
conditions highlighted how easy the Hayabusa
is to get around a track if you can rustle up a bit
of finesse.
As I entered the pit garage to await my next
session in an hour’s time the rain stopped, and
a dry line started to form. I took in the new
Hayabusa – it looks so much more refined than
the superseded bike, the finish is excellent – it’s
the level of fit and finish you expect from a $27,690
motorcycle – and I assure you the pictures do not
do the new bike justice.
As I rolled out for my first session on the latest
Hayabusa, the clouds did what they do best at
the Island and by the end of my first lap, the rain
started to fall again, erasing the dry line.
The new Hayabusa’s power and torque figures
are lower than the older bike’s (140kw at 9700rpm
versus 145kW at 9500pm, and 150Nm at 7000rpm
v 155Nm at 7200rpm) and there has been a lot of
36 amcn.com.au
 4

FAST FOE 5
KAWASAKI ZX-14R
Power 154.5kW @ 10,000rpm (claimed)
Torque 158.2Nm @ 7500rpm (claimed)
Weight 269kg (kerb, claimed)
Price $22,099 plus on road costs

3 6

negative talk around that point. I ll admit that
I was a little disappointed to read that when
AMCN broke the news – I mean the Hayabusa is
supposed to be about obscene amounts of power
and a new Busa shouldn’t have less, should it?
And while peak power might be lower, Suzuki
claims that the latest bike makes more in the
midrange and, as I ripped out of pitlane and
accelerated out of Southern Loop, I could
definitely notice the difference. It’s an increase
just where you need it on a roadbike.
If you can notice the peak power reduction,
then I look forward to following your racing
career because in these conditions I couldn’t feel
any difference. Still, from a would-be owner’s ego
point of view, higher power and torque figures
over the old model is kind of a must.
It’s braking heavily for the first time heading
into the turn-four hairpin where you notice
how much the new Brembo Stylema brakes and
bigger 320mm discs have improved the braking
performance. There’s far more power and loads
more feel, and you’re backed-up by lean-angle-
sensitive ABS – and in these sketchy conditions
and on the only example in the country, that’s
worth every dollar over the outgoing model alone.
I also took a short road ride where every wallaby
and cantankerous goose on the Island seemed to
dart in front of the big ’Busa, and it cemented just
how responsive and powerful the new anchors are
and how the Bosch IMU’s computing power can

It’s an increase in
keep you from being that guy who dropped the
only generation III Hayabusa in town.

power just where

The ’Busa now features a full suite of electronic
wizardry, with multiple ride modes, launch

you need it on a
control, engine braking control, cruise control
and hill hold control. The cornering traction

roadbike
control keeps the rear tyre in check as you
accelerate hard out of Siberia allowing the rear

amcn.com.au 37
quickspin
1. PV found the ’Busa to be quite adept at avoiding
endangered Victorian wildlife 2. ’Busa nirvana; a left-
hand switchblock that controls its advanced electronics

2022 SUZUKI HAYABUSA GSX1300R

SPECS
ENGINE
Capacity 1340cc
Type In-line four, DOHC,
16 valves
Bore & stroke 81 x 65mm
Compression ratio 12.6:1
Cooling Liquid
Fueling EFI
Transmission Six-speed
Clutch Wet, multi-plate
Final drive Chain
PERFORMANCE
Power 140kW @ 9700rpm
Torque 150Nm @ 7000rpm
(claimed)
Top speed 299km/h (limited)
Fuel consumption 6.7L/100km
(claimed)
ELECTRONICS
Type Bosch
Rider aids: Cornering ABS,
cornering traction control,
wheelie control, launch control,
1 engine brake assist, hill assist,
quick shift, cruise control

The engine retains

Ride modes: Active, Basic
especially noticeable as you head down from and Comfort
Lukey Heights and pitch the bike on its side to
that trademark
CHASSIS
gingerly negotiate the turn 10 hairpin. Frame material Cast aluminium
The new bike isn’t just better in the slow-
Hayabusa/GSX-R
Frame type Twin spar
speed stuff, though, it’s even better in fast turns Rake 23˚
Trail 90mm

rawness
where the outgoing bike – and especially the
Wheelbase 1480mm
first-generation version – required a great deal of
muscle to turn in or change direction mid corner. SUSPENSION
Type KYB
Its increased nimbleness and stability are very Front: 43mm USD fork,
apparent as you round turns 11 and 12. A stab fully adjustable,
2 at the left-hand ’bar gets the ’Busa turned, and 120mm travel
it’s absolutely rock solid as you power onto the Rear: Monoshock, fully
adjustable, 140mm travel
straight and let the 1340cc four-cylinder engine
have its way, rear tyre squirming until you’re back WHEELS & BRAKES
Wheels 7-spoke aluminium
upright and on the middle of the tyre. Front: 17 x 3.5 Rear: 17 x 6
The engine has been extensively updated, but it Tyres Bridgestone Battlax S22
retains that trademark Hayabusa/GSX-R rawness. Front: 120/70ZR17
There’s no lack of power and you make ground Rear: 190/50ZR17
Brakes Brembo/Nissin, ABS
on the litre bikes until they build revs, then they
Front: Dual 320mm discs,
move ahead until the Busa’s aero package comes Stylema four piston calipers
into effect and you start to reel them in. By then Rear: Single 260mm disc,
it’s time to tip into turn one and it all starts again. single-piston caliper
to slide without getting out of control and it’s I’ll confess that I’m a total fanboy of both the DIMENSIONS
especially reassuring as you fire over Lukey first- and second-generation Hayabusas. Am I Weight 264kg (kerb, claimed)
Heights. It’s a proper modern system and I felt way biased? No; if anything my expectations of the Seat height 800mm
Width 735mm
more confident pushing on the latest generation new model were higher because of that. I was Height 1165mm
than I did on the Gen II. It keeps you in control in disappointed when I saw the latest offering Length 2180mm
a smooth and predictable way, which is exactly makes less power and I really, really wanted it Ground clearance 125mm
what it should do. to have a turbo lashed to it, but the truth is it’s Fuel capacity 20L
And the confidence is not only inspired by got more than enough power anyway and makes SERVICING & WARRANTY
the electronics. Although the frame remains better use of what it does have due to its fancy Servicing First: 1000km
Minor: 12,000km
essentially the same, geometry changes and new electronics. Major: 24,000km
updates to the fully adjustable KYB suspension On top of that, handling and braking have Warranty Two years,
have conspired to create a more stable, yet lighter improved and it’s a well sorted, modern and unlimited km
feeling and more flickable Hayabusa. This was stylish Hayabusa fit for a new decade. BUSINESS END
Price $27,690 (ride away)
2022 SUZUKI HAYABUSA GSX1300R Colour options Glass Sparkle
Black/Candy Burnt Gold or

PROS CONS
It’s now got the tech to save your bacon Down on power and torque over the old Metallic Matte Sword Silver/
and get all that power to the ground. model and that impacts your bragging Candy Daring Red
Improved brakes, handling and midrange rights. The price is up significantly Contact
suzukimotorcycles.com.au

38 amcn.com.au
 040 FIRST
RIDE 2021 APRILIA TUONO V4 FACTORY

YOU CHILD

Y!
S t at
B
e
Eof t nd a n w
h i s t i ca
i n g a rm a ost sop
sw the m

40 amcn.com.au
amcn.com.au 41
 2021 APRILIA TUONO V4 FACTORY

t does sound amazing, even at idle. I know from

experience that Aprilia’s V4 has always had a
distinctive chorus but now, with more rpm to
play with this has magnified the experience to
overindulgent levels.
Leaving the famous pitlane at Misano, and the
new Factory sounds magnificent, the V4 blasting
pulsating vibrations off the pit wall. Does it get
any better than this? Out on to the track on pre-
heated Pirelli slicks the bike is straight into it,
accelerating hard to join the swarm of Italian
racers already up to race speed.
The noise is gorgeous, it has a voice
which would put Pavarotti to shame! This is
accompanied by the smoothest of quickshifters
I’ve experienced on a roadbike. The changes are
quick, perfectly matched in rpm.
The fuelling and throttle response, like the
clutchless gear changes, are f lawless. Aprilia
has updated the electronics with a new Magneti
Marelli ECU, which is essentially the brain
that controls the fuelling and rider aids. This is
four times faster than the previous ECU, which
results in possibly one of the most, perfectly
fuelled bikes I’ve
ever ridden – even 7
in the aggressive
Race mode (one THE
of six modes to
choose from). I NOISE IS
always praised
the old bike’s GORGEOUS,
fuelling and
electronic rider IT HAS
aids, especially the
quickshifter, which A VOICE
I didn’t think could
be improved. But WHICH 2
it has.
From leaving WOULD PUT
pitlane, the new
Tuono felt like my PAVAROTTI
bike and one I’d
owned for years.
The fuelling and
TO SHAME! 1
3
4

shifts instantly
boost rider faith
in that all-important connection between rider,
bike and road. I’m pushing hard from lap two on
an unfamiliar racetrack.
The new Tuono may ‘only’ have 129kW (175hp)
which, on paper is considerably less than the
Italian competition from Ducati and MV Agusta,
but every kilowatt is functioning. Nothing goes
to waste, meaning you can use every last bit.
Make no mistake; it’s fast, accelerates hard,
but it’s not crushing, and the rider aids are
outstanding.
Aprilia’s anti-wheelie is as good as it gets,
balancing the front wheel lift while still
accelerating. I congratulate the fact that the
traction control can be changed on the move,
even at 100 per cent throttle. Unlike other
nakedbikes in this hotly contested category, that
small aerodynamic top fairing, now with built-
in winglets, offers some wind protection. But
does raise the question, is it a true naked?
The combination of the fuelling, rider aids,
gearbox, power delivery and the aero-package

42 amcn.com.au
 1. STAYING PUT
Aprilia has been forced to
conform to tight Euro-5
emissions regulations but,
unlike the RSV4, hasn’t
increased engine capacity
for 2021 – staying instead at
1077cc.

2. EURO VISION
The Italians have managed
to clean up the V4 with a
completely new and lighter
exhaust and revised fuelling.
Peak power and torque remain
the same at 129Kw at 11,350rpm 1
and 121Nm @ 9000rpm,
respectively.
2 3
3. GIVE
ME FIVE
The familiarly narrow
65-degree V4 has been tickled,
which has increased the
maximum rpm by 300, from
12,500rpm to 12,800rpm, and
according to Aprilia this gains
an extra 5km/h in top speed.

4. RACE MODE
Race mode automatically
6 sets the Öhlins semi-active
suspension to A1 (active 1), a
setting purposely optimised for
track use with slicks, as used
on this test.

5. ON THE
STOPS
Simply fi tting the best brakes
and pads doesn’t automatically
equate to excellent braking.
You must also have grip and
feel supplied via the tyre, fork,
chassis, electronics and rider
aids. Tick!

6. BOX FOR
5
BRAINS
A Magneti Marelli ECU is key
to the advanced rider aids,
now able to operate four times
faster than the previous ECU
and has four times as much
memory, too. This is linked to
the six-axis IMU.
riding the Tuono on
7. CLICKETY
CLICK
There are six riding modes –
three for the track and three
for the road –which link to the
rider aids and act accordingly
3. Top of the range
to set the semi-active Öhlins
suspension.
is highly adjustable
make the Factory ultra-usable on track and,
relative to the competition, easy to ride, too.
Certainly less physical than the competition, like
the Ducati Streetfighter V4.
1. Our man Child Aprilia arguably bent the rules for a roadbike
‘cheated’ a bit by launch by fitting Pirelli SC1 slick (Pirelli Diablo
slicks at Misano
Supercorsa are the standard fitment) tyres and it
dialled in the perfect setting for the very grippy
2. The wings-on-
a-naked concept
might be cheating
Misano racetrack, but it illustrated what the
Tuono is capable of – and it is mighty.
a bit too – but they You can change the electronic Öhlins
add to stability suspension, compensate for the rider’s weight
and conditions, or even revert to the manual
modes without semi-active assistance. But I
Öhlins suspension
stayed with the recommend A1 settings, which
thanks to new ECU for my style and weight were impeccable.
and six-axis IMU Nothing seems to unsettle or worry the new

amcn.com.au 43
2021 APRILIA TUONO V4 FACTORY

Tuono; it makes life easy. Brake late and you still

hit the apex with perfect precision. Accelerate
early and it continues to hold its line. Everything
is controlled. You’re not panicking, it doesn’t feel
like you are rushing or in a fight, you have more
time to choose your lines and braking points.
The slicks combined with the track’s MotoGP-
spec surface meant grip was never a concern.
The newly formed fuel tank allows you to move
around freely while still offering support. And
ground clearance isn’t an issue, which is handy,
because the Tuono likes to lay on its side like an
obedient dog.
The new fairing – yes, a fairing on a naked bike
– with built-in winglets is designed to enhance
high-speed stability by boosting downforce. In
1 the A1 setup (automatic suspension), I had very
slight ’bar movement at the very top of fifth gear,
but it was virtually nothing. On some models,
electronic semi-active suspension can feel a
little vague. But this wasn’t the case with the
new Tuono. The translation from the suspension
and tyres was
spot on.
Brakes continue
as the same M50 IT’S NOT
Brembo calipers
found on the FULLY
previous model.
Three-level NAKED
cornering ABS
(co-designed with AND THE
Bosch) allows ABS
SMALL TOP
FAIRING
to be removed
from the rear

DEFLECTS
should you wish.
2 3
The system works
in partnership
with the Rear Lift SOME OF
Mitigation (RLM),
which prevents THE WIND
the rear wheel
from rising during
braking.
BLAST
Aprilia Engine
Brake (AEB),
which adjusts the engine brake control, is brand
new for 2021 and is now independent of the
selected engine maps. You can now personalise
and trim the engine braking ‘strategy’; AEB
also takes lean angle and acceleration into
consideration as you brake and roll into a
turn, for example. Although the mechanical
components of the brakes have remained
unchanged, the algorithms and calculations
activating the system are quicker – the ABS is
1. Brembo monoblocs more alert.
are becoming de Away from the racetrack and living with the
rigeur for ultra- Tuono, the Aprilia has always scored highly
performance bikes, against the competition. A lot of this is because
for good reason
it’s not fully naked and the small top fairing
2. Revised swingarm def lects some of the windblast. It’s the most
is the most visible bearable at speed. The reshaped tank’s capacity
update over the
previous model
is 18.5L and Aprilia quotes consumption at
7.2L/100km. This was a track-only test, so I
3. Choose your didn’t get a measured consumption figure, but if
Tuono; L, the Tuono
V4 Factory and the
Aprilia is to be believed, on the road you should
‘standard’ Tuono V4 be looking for fuel around the 220-kay mark.

44 amcn.com.au
 From a single platform,
Aprilia has built two
remarkably different
motorcycles
FOR 2021 APRILIA has
produced two quite different
versions of its hypernaked:
the standard Tuono V4 and
the Tuono V4 Factory. The
standard version is very
much a break with habit;
with a larger top fairing,
higher ’bars, a comfier seat,
grab handles even, lower
pillion ’pegs and a taller
top gear, you could almost
describe it as reasonable.
It is focused on practicality
and high mileages, which
is not what we’d expect
from a Tuono. Engine
performance is the same
across both models, but the
standard version comes
suspended on manual fully
adjustable suspension,
rather than the Öhlins
Smart EC 2.0 semi-active
suspension on the Factory.
The Factory’s bodywork
reduces in size and for 2021
gets built-in winglets, while
the ergonomics are more
directed to sporty track
riding. It’s a big step for
Aprilia to produce two very
different models, using the
same platform.

Practically speaking, cruise control

comes as standard and the all-new five-inch
colour TFT dash is informative and easy to
navigate. The three road-orientated riding
modes – Tour, Sport and User (a personalised
mode) – change the power characteristics,
rider aids and the support and actuation of
the semi-active suspension. And should you
want something more ‘sensible’, don’t forget
the standard model (see sidebar), which has
conventional suspension and more road-
focused ergonomics for both rider and pillion,
all still with the same performance and new
technology.
In the accessories list there are also
practical products available, such as a comfort
seat, side panniers, a larger top fairing, USB

amcn.com.au 45
2021 APRILIA TUONO V4 FACTORY

port and the MIA kit for Bluetooth connectivity.

A new Marelli ECU allows for more innovative
rider aids than ever and they all come as
standard fitment on the Factory. The ECU is
now able to operate four times faster than the
previous model’s and is linked to the six-axis
IMU which also takes information from various
sensors around the bike, like brake pressure and
wheel speed, to name just a couple.
ATC (Aprilia Traction Control) has eight levels
and can be changed on the f ly – this is important
1
and often overlooked. In one particular session I
had to leave pitlane
on a brand-new
slick, so I increased
the TC to six. Then,
after one lap, while THE ECU
tucked in and
accelerating down IS NOW
the main straight,
I f licked it back to ABLE TO
level three. On lap
OPERATE
FOUR
two I performed the
same action and

TIMES
finally f licked down
to one. I didn’t have
2
to move off line, slow
down, come into the
pits, or look at the
FASTER 3
dash for more than
a second. This is
simple and easy to do, via the finger-and-thumb
toggle on the left-hand handlebar.
AWC (Aprilia Wheelie Control) has five levels
and, like the traction control, can be changed
while on the pipe, an added bonus that not only
1. Wing theme is carried shaves lap times but makes the bike easier and
over to the pillion, er, more fun to ride. Again if you feel intimidated
‘seat’ at a track which undulates violently, you can
2. Child found the add more wheelie control while still lapping at a
adjustable-on-the-fly reasonable rate.
rider settings to be a There are three different engine maps (AEM),
boon on-track those three engine braking levels (AEB) and,
3. ’Tis a handsome beast, as before, three settings for Aprilia Launch
to be sure Control (ALC) and Aprilia Pit Lane Limiter

Ducati’s V4 Streetfi ghter S uses the similar Öhlins smart suspension,

Despite a $4600 price hike, it actually stacks up pretty
well against its rivals
APRILIA HAS EDGED the price up to $31,790 (ride away) from $27 190
comparable rider aids, and is arguably just as desirable, maybe even
more. But the Ducati is $34,200 (ride away) $2400 more than the Aprilia.
But the extra dollar buys 30hp more engine performance compared to the
Aprilia, to be fair.
MV Agusta has the stunning Brutale 1000 RR, which also uses similar
suspension, but this time prices start at $52,190 (ride away). Like the
Ducati, the MV is also a member of the 200hp-plus club.
KTM has announced a 1290 Super Duke RR with a 1:1 power-to-weight
ratio (18 hp 180k ry). It gets manually adjustable suspension, a
rts and is expected to be around 25 percent
 NEW
TOP CASES
TR48
TR37

1.2mm Forged
Aluminium body
SIDE CASES Integrated carry handle
TR47 Flush mounted
locking system
TR36 Stainless steel fittings

ACCESSORIES
ALUMINIUM PLATE
SOLD SEPARATELY

TR IB 47
INNER BAG

TR 47

DISTRIBUTED BY:

Ph: 1300 885 355 www.shadaustralia.com.au facebook.com/motonational

 (APL). Let’s not THE RIDER AIDS I couldn’t really see
forget the previously
mentioned Aprilia ARE SOME OF THE how the model could be
significantly improved
Cruise Control (ACC)
and the commendable
BEST I’VE EVER – but it has been. The
rider aids, including the
EXPERIENCED
SPECS
(AQS) Aprilia Quick fuelling and quickshift,
Shift, which has a new are some of the best I’ve
operating strategy for ever experienced on a
2021 that even allows roadbike. The new dash
ENGINE
downshift with the throttle still open. and switchgear make the rider aids more Capacity 1077cc
Add the cornering ABS trickery and that sums accessible. Type 65º V4 triple, DOHC,
up a lengthy list of features and safety aids, The V4 may not have comparable figures of 16-valves
and all damn easy to use. The dash alone is a other Italian supernakeds, but all the power Bore & stroke 81 x 52.3mm
Compression ratio 13.6:1
substantial move over the previous bike, whose is usable, nothing is wasted, even for less Cooling Liquid
clocks were starting to appear a little dated next experienced riders and the improved over-rev Fueling EFI, 4 x 48mm Marelli
to the competition. is a nice touch. The handling is excellent, and throttle bodies with 8 injectors
I’ve ridden the now ‘old’ Tuono V4 Factory the semi-active suspension takes none of the Transmission Six-speed
extensively in the past, both on the road and raw feeling away like some systems. Oh, and Clutch Wet, multi-plate, slipper
Final drive Chain
the track, I’ve always praised its accessibility, did I mention the sound and the looks – she is
electronics and handling. It was so complete a true beauty. PERFORMANCE
Power 129kW @ 11,350rpm (claimed)
Torque 121Nm @ 9000rpm (claimed)
Top speed 260km/h (est)
Fuel consumption 7.2L/100km
(claimed)
ELECTRONICS
Type Aprilia
Rider aids Engine maps, Engine
brake, Traction control, Wheelie
control, Launch control, Cruise
Control, Pit limiter
Rider modes Road: Tour, Sport and
User. Track: Race, Track 1, Track 2.
CHASSIS
Frame material Aluminium
Frame type Twin spar
Rake 24.8º
Trail 99.9mm
Wheelbase 1452.4mm
SUSPENSION
1. Even with less grunt Type Öhlins
than some supernakeds, Front: Smart EC 2.0, 43mm USD
the Tuono V4 Factory fork, fully-adjustable,
was a weapon at Misano 129mm travel
Rear: TTX36 Smart EC 2.0, fully-
2. You can have adjustable, 130mm travel
your Tuono with max
WHEELS & BRAKES
hardcore or less so...
1 Wheels Cast aluminium
Front: 17 x 3.5 Rear: 17 x 6.0
2 Tyres Pirelli Supercorsa SP
(standard)
Front: 120/70ZR17
Rear: 200/55ZR17
Brakes Brembo,
Bosch cornering ABS
Front: Twin 320 disc,
four-piston M50 calipers
Rear: Single 220mm disc,
twin-piston caliper
DIMENSIONS
Weight 209kg (wet, claimed)
Seat height 837mm
Width 810mm
Height 1085mm
Length 2070mm
Ground clearance 129mm
Fuel capacity 18.5L
SERVICING & WARRANTY
Servicing First: 1000km
Minor: 10,000km
Major: 20,000km
Warranty Two years,
unlimited km
2021 APRILIA TUONO V4 FACTORY BUSINESS END

PROS CONS
Price $31,790 (ride away)
Electronics and rider aids are second to It’s a lot of money, but still better
Colour options Factory
none, the performance is peerless in terms than its rivals and an Akrapovic pipe
Contact
of usability and the handling is excellent should be standard on the Factory www.aprilia.com/au_EN

amcn.com.au 49
050 NEW
TECH TURBO TECHNOLOGY
 WORDS &
PHOTOGRAPHY
BEN PURVIS

Hang on, before we all

go electric, the internal
combustion engine still has a
few surprises to spring
fter more than a century of development,
the internal combustion engine that
forms the centrepiece of virtually every
motorcycle is reaching its swansong. But
before the technology bows out for good,
we’re likely to see a generation of petrol-
powered bikes that are more advanced
than any before as companies strive to
simultaneously reduce emissions and
increase performance.
After years focussing on the development of Euro 5
compliant engines that meet the latest European emissions
rules, which are widely mirrored by local regulations all
over the globe, bike firms have a brief breathing space for
the foreseeable future. The next set of emissions limits
have yet to be set, or even widely discussed, so it will be
years before they come into force. That means a period of
stability is on the way, but manufacturers know that any
new engines under development at the moment need to be
prepared to be even cleaner than the current generation if
they’re to live beyond the inevitable tightening of emissions
limits that will come in a few years time.
While electric models are under development, the
idea of battery-powered bikes that can match or beat the
current combustion engine models in terms of out-and-
out performance and range is still nearer fiction than fact.
Hybrids – the stepping stone that car makers have opted
for – are also in the works (AMCN Vol 70 No 21), but not
the main focus of many mainstream bike companies. But
another route that’s proved successful on four wheels as
car makers try to balance the need for better emissions and
economy with consumers’ demands for more performance,
is forced induction. Largely taboo in motorcycle circles
since the disastrous attempts at jumping on the turbo
bandwagon in the 1980s, the idea of forced-induction
motorcycles is starting to gain more traction.
 TURBO TECHNOLOGY

40 YEARS OF PROGRES
In the 1980s, turbos were all the rage in cars.
Driven by development in Formula 1 racing
where they exploited a loophole in the rules,
which allowed 1.5-litre turbo engines to
compete against 3-litre normally aspirated
designs, turbo technology was improving at
breakneck pace and proving that tiny engine
could make mammoth power figures.
Turbocharged rally cars, sedans and
sportscars followed, with performance
spiralling out of control towards the mid-80s
when 1500cc F1 motors were hitting highs of
as much as 1400hp in qualifying ‘grenade’
spec. Any bike firm was sure to be interested
in getting some of that action, and soon all
four Japanese brands were beavering away o
boosted bikes with the hope of getting big po
from a small package. Honda even tried to
Above. Kawasaki has
mimic the turbo’s F1 success by making an o
committed to forced
pistoned V-twin – the NR250 – by bolting tw induction with its
tiny blowers to a motor that was basically half turbochargers that are easier to spin-up than
supercharged H2 their forebears, and allied to modern electronic
the ill-fated NR500’s V4 in the mid-80s. It never and H2R
saw the track. engine management, the development of
The problem with those 80s turbo bikes was low-pressure turbocharging on engines with
inevitably the same: turbo lag. Turbos of the era relatively high compression ratios, and ride-by-
were designed with cars in mind, with insensitive wire throttles, the old problem of lag simply isn’t
foot-operated throttles and heavy flywheels, the issue that it was in the 1980s.
and even then, turbo lag was often a problem
on four wheels. Apply a turbo to a bike, with a
quick-revving engine, a sensitive hand-operated
throttle and a skinny sliver of 1980s-spec rubber
to put the power to the ground and it was a recipe
for disaster – and that was before we even get
into the issue of the era’s flexible steel frames
and spindly suspension parts. Worse still, to
cope with the extra mixture that would be
introduced to the cylinders under boost, turbo
engines needed low-compression ratios, making
them limp and lethargic when the turbo wasn’t
blowing and serving to emphasise the difference
between on- and off-boost performance.
Such was the backlash, for decades it’s been
widely accepted bikes and turbos simply
d ’t i w t t at t e e ril

ON
ecent Yamaha
Recursion
emissions and
out-and-out
iming 100hp from
rged, intercooled parallel twin. The
ed into the XE7 engine prototype two
, looking much closer to production-
ss. The XE7 grew to around 700cc
ined a DOHC head instead of the
al SOHC design, suggesting higher-
rmance targets, but after being
wn in 2015, the project disappeared
sight.
nce then, a steady stream of patent
cations from Suzuki has shown that
a is still developing, growing into a
quite a diff erent layout and design
c mp re to the original Recursion concept.
HONDA SUPERCH
AFRICA TWIN
HONDA MIGHT HAVE led the way in
the original turbo motorcycle era
with the CX500 Turbo and aborted
plans for a smaller VT250 Turbo, but
its attentions have fi rmly turned to s
the next-generation of forced-induct
While the company hasn’t shown
on the record about its plans, severa
machines have appeared in patents
couple of years, most notably a deta
around the Africa Twin’s 1084cc para
Unlike Kawasaki’s supercharged H
use centrifugal superchargers that in
engine revs rise, Honda’s designs ha
displacement blowers that maintain
levels of boost all the way from idle t
The diff erence is that centrifugal s
work a bit like fans, blowing harder th
spin, while positive-displacement de
akin to pumps, moving a
fi xed volume of air with
each revolution. For a
bike like an Africa Twin,
the low-end torque that
a positive-displacement
supercharger can provide
would be more useful than
the higher peak power that
a centrifugal supercharger
or a turbocharger might
off er.
SMALLER SUPERCHARGED
KAWASAKI
Kawasaki has been hard at work developing its supercharged H2
range over the last few years, however the company has always been open that it has
wider plans for the technology.
Back in 2015, Kawasaki’s ‘Soul Charger’ and ‘Spirit Charger’ design sketches – a
supercharged nakedbike and a half-faired, smaller-looking design respectively –
hinted at the fi rm’s future plans. The Soul Charger has arguably evolved into the Z H2,
albeit with a modern style instead of the retro look of the original sketch. Could the
Spirit Charger yet turn into a smaller boosted bike? Kawasaki is also working hard
on hybrid technology at the moment, so an emissions-busting, boosted-and-hybrid
machine might yet be its solution to future emissions limits.

YAMAHA’S PROVES
THE POTENTIAL
The Japanese manufacturers are split over
forced induction. All are working on the idea
but there’s no clear consensus when it comes to
the choice of exhaust-driven turbochargers or
engine-driven superchargers.
Kawasaki is clearly ahead of the game, already
selling a range of supercharged H2 models
using its own in-house-designed, engine-
driven centrifugal superchargers. Honda has
yet to officially show any boosted bikes but
has been developing its own supercharged
machines, focussing on designs with positive-
displacement superchargers, quite different to
Kawasaki’s thinking.
On the other side of the fence we have Suzuki,
which has been a vocal proponent of exhaust- Is another supercharged
driven turbos, and Yamaha. Despite the fact nakedbike on the way?
Suzuki has been working on a turbocharged
TURBO TECHNOLOGY

Other ASTON MARTIN

boosted
projects AMB 001
Even small-scale companies are looking to
forced-induction and the Aston Martin AMB
001 looks to provide a handful of well-heeled
customers the chance to get a boosted bike to
sit alongside their supercars.
Limited to a production run of 100, the AMB
001 is a joint project with the latest iteration of
Brough Superior – a brand that’s now part
of French designer Thierry Henriette’s
stable, alongside his long-running
Boxer Design concern, which itself has
spawned desirable machines including
the Voxan-powered Boxer VB1 from 20
years ago.
The fi rm claims 134kW from a
turbocharged version of Brough’s 997cc
V-twin, with a variable-geometry turbo that
uses a low inertia turbine to reduce lag.

Other

DA
boosted
projects

-300
O e more
g turbo
nderway at
nt is new
and Benda
a ‘VTR-300
tsbike.
eady
V-twin
ater-
cooled, DOHC design
used in its BD300
bobber, and has
recently expanded
to start international
sales, initially with
a dealer network
in Italy. Confirmed
future models also
include the BD700 –
a 680cc inline-four
cylinder with crazy
concept bike styling.
Whether the VTR-
A lot has changed 300 Turbo uses a
since Yamaha’s 650 boosted version of
turbo of 1981 the BD300’s twin or
has an all-new unit of
its own, it promises
to be the first sub-
500cc turbocharged
production bike the
world has ever seen.
HONDA SUPERCHAR
V-TWIN
Another supercharged Honda
project, seen in 2016 patents, is
this blown V-twin. Like the Africa
Twin designs, it uses a positive-
displacement blower, but this
time bolted between the cylinders
of a 90-degree V-twin. While the
patent documents don’t reveal
details of the bike’s performance
or size, it looks like a smaller displacement m
with the engine acting as a structural part of
chassis to keep weight to a minimum. The re
small, SOHC design suggests that out-and-o
performance isn’t the idea, instead the boos
allow a small-capacity, low revving engine t
tailored for minimal emissions to simply ma
the power and torque demands from custom
without vast increases in manufacturing co

Yamaha’s 847.5cc
turbocharged
triple test mule

In 1982 Honda showed

off its CX 500 Turbo

CLEAN AS A WHISTLE
 TURBO TECHNOLOGY

SUZUKI HAYABUSA TURBO PROTOTYPE

performance, how about BMW’s S 1000 R? That
puts out 144g/km.
Compared to the existing Euro 5 emissions
It might not have reached production, but Suzuki has confi rmed that it developed
limits, the Yamaha prototype’s other and tested a turbocharged Hayabusa in the development of the revamped 2021
emissions were also remarkably low, with model. The bike missed the cut because Suzuki found it could update the old Busa
less than 20 per cent of the permitted levels engine to meet Euro-5 emissions limits without losing performance, but as and
of carbon monoxide and 50 per cent of the when another new generation of pollution restrictions come into force, Suzuki will
allowed NOx. Hydrocarbon limits, and be well-placed to reuse that turbo Busa research.
particularly restrictions on non-methane
hydrocarbons, have been among the toughest Other
boosted
element of Euro 5 for bike firms to comply projects
with, yet the Yamaha prototype only emits
around 40 percent of the permitted levels.
All in all, it’s a solution that appears to offer
vast environmental and performance benefits
over current motorcycle technology, all by
using proven ideas that have already reached
mass-production in cars.

WHAT ABOUT THE LAG?

As suspected, the vast development of turbo
and electronics technology since the 1980s
means it’s nothing like the issue it used to
be. Yamaha found that with some careful
mapping of the ride-by-wire throttles,
ignition, and the direct injection t
make the engine respond alm
Snapping the throttle open at 3
it took less than 0.1 of a second
significant increase in torque,
1.03 seconds the bike was putti
more than 90 percent of its max
torque. Given that max torque is
that means it only took around a
go from zero to 157.5Nm (in comp
Yamaha MT-10 manages a peak o
9000rpm, a figure the turbo proto
hit well under a second after open
throttle at a third of that engine s
Of course, the Yamaha machine i
not a prototype that’s heading for p
but the results it has achieved must
way to encourage Yamaha in the dir
turbos as it looks to the future. Nota
firm has also patented designs for a
parallel-twin turbo bike with a simila
likely to be around the 700cc mark.

esi n are
nomic Commission for
l legislation elsewhere.
p n nd India have effectively aligned their own limits
ones, and even China is largely following suit. Euro 5 came into full
orce in Europe on 1 January this year, which means all eyes are now on what
he regulations will evolve into when they’re next reviewed. Although the Euro
motorcycle rules haven’t even been discussed yet, they’re likely to fall into line
ith planned Euro 7 car limits (confusingly, motorcycle emission limits are one
umber behind their four-wheeled equivalents; cars sold in Europe already have
o meet their own Euro 6 emissions standards that are basically the same as the
wo-wheeled Euro 5 ones).
The Euro 7 car rules, under development at the moment and expected to be
ntroduced in 2025, are likely to be the last before internal-combustion powered
ars are banned from sale altogether in Europe. The Euro 6 rules for bikes are
ikely to come into force in the late 2020s, and it’s at this stage that technology like
urbos, superchargers, variable valve timing and direct fuel injection will become
astly more important for any company still hoping to squeeze more from petrol
ower units.
What a month it has been for Jack Miller.
After a rough start to the MotoGP season
the Aussie said he would work hard to
climb out of the hole he was in. Two races
and 50 points later, he has done just that
060 THROW
BACK YAMAHA EUROPE TRX850R

ACHIEVER
It’s every racer’s dream; a one-off,
hand-built, factory-backed bike
to take on your favourite class of
racing. That is just what happened
to Alan Cathcart 25 years ago
WORDS ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOGRAPHY KYOICHI NAKAMURA & AC ARCHIVE

I
n a 25-year International road racing career, I rode
several out-of-the ordinary racebikes, but there was
one above all others which acquired a cult following of
admirers around the world. So much so that in the early
days of the internet, I’d get fan letters for my gal Trixie!
So exactly 25 years since I scored the most satisfying of
race victories with her at Daytona’s Cycle Week 1996,
here’s a look back at the three years I spent racing the
unique Over Racing-prepared parallel-twin Yamaha
TRX850R for Yamaha Motor Europe.

60 amcn.com.au
amcn.com.au 61
 YAMAHA EUROPE TRX850R

LATE IN 1994 word got out that Yamaha was

developing a twin-cylinder sportbike based on 1
its TDM850 Adventure Sports street trailie, to
create a competitor to the Ducati 900SS then
selling especially strongly in Japan. It did so
by re-engineering the DOHC parallel-twin
motor internally, to mimic a Ducati’s tractable
temperament by rephasing the crank throw from
the TDM’s two-up 360° format to a then-unique
270° guise, delivering the same character as a 90°
V-twin. In this it copied Stéphane Peterhansel’s
YZE850 desert racer which in 1991-93 he’d taken
to a trio of Paris-Dakar victories, an engine format
which gave him the same off-road traction on
loose surfaces as offered by the Ducati motor in
the Cagiva Elefant his rival Edi Orioli won the
Dakar on in 1990. The YZE850’s rally-winning
rideability was now translated to the street.
Launched as a Japan-market only model in
March 1995 – followed two years later by Honda’s
VTR1000 Firestorm and Suzuki’s TL1000S – the
TRX850 was that long-awaited product from
Japan Inc. – a twin-cylinder sportsbike with heaps
of personality, which was practical enough for
everyday use, but sufficiently exciting. Known
internally by its Project 005 tag, the TRX850
created by the Yamaha R&D team headed by
Hirosuke Negishi was a baseline sports model,
delivering performance and handling the
common rider could appreciate without feeling
intimidated by the bike’s hyper-potential.
Yamaha Motor Europe’s Amsterdam HQ
couldn’t decide if there was a place for ‘Trixie’ in
western Europe, but YME Marketing Manager
Lin Jarvis (yep, the Lin Jarvis who today is CEO
of Yamaha Racing’s MotoGP effort) came up
with a bright idea. It was to get Over Racing, the 2
satellite tuning company accessed via the back
door of the Japanese factory’s race shop – just like
Moriwaki/Honda, or Yoshimura/Suzuki – to build
a reasonably trick TRX850R racer, then give it to
a journalist to race that year in Europe’s leading
ProTwin events.
So before he recruited Valentino Rossi, Jorge
Lorenzo and Fabio Quartararo, he first recruited
me! What made this feasible was that year’s
widespread adoption of new EuroTwin rules
for twin-cylinder racing. These were aimed
at eliminating neo-Superbikes like the latest
Ducati 888 SPO/916SPS customer spinoffs of the
Polen/Fogarty World Superbike title-winners, by
allowing liquid-cooling, fuel injection and more
than two valves per cylinder, but only two out of
those three elements, not all three.
The premier 1995 Euro-series run to these rules
was the Dutch Open, an eight-round Benelux
championship (seven best scores to count)
attracting riders from all over Northern Europe
mounted on a variety of machines ranging from
fuel-injected Moto Guzzi and BMW eight-valvers
mounted in special race frames, through every
possible type of 900SS/907ie Ducati-based
racer, via assorted Harleys, Triumphs and TDM
Yamahas, up to the inevitable Ducati 888/926
fitted with carbs. Jarvis reckoned the new 10-valve
twin wouldn’t be disgraced in such company. And
it was up to me to prove them right.
So the Over Racing workshop in Suzuka was

62 amcn.com.au
 commissioned to build a racebike in six weeks, 1. Over Racing boss
3 before air-freighting it to Europe in time for the Kensei Sato, R, welcomes
first round of the Dutch Open series at Assen on Cathcart home after a
Easter Monday, 16 April. I’d never even sat on the winning debut at Assen
bike until the first qualifying session, much less in 1995
tested it or set it up. But Over boss Kensei Sato flew 2. Cathcart won the
over with his chief race mechanic Ume Umemoto, opening Dutch round at
to look after it for the first two races in company Hengelo a week later
with my race engineer Alistair Wager, who’d take 3. Over was synonymous
over after that. I’d been racing Kensei’s bikes in with attention to detail;
Japan for the previous five years, so we had some stock frame was braced
in some places and
base settings to work with.
drilled for lightness
In my Japanese outings, I had beat factory in others
entries from Suzuki and Honda – as well as
4. Sir Al leads the field
Kensei-san’s own Over-Yamaha – to win the 1994
in the 1995 Tolbert
Japanese Sound of Singles title on my Ducati Dutch Open
Supermono, all of which strengthened the
5. Cathcart, #99, won
relationship I’d built up with Bridgestone since the wet 1995 Assen
becoming the Japanese tyre company’s first fully Dutch Open by 25
sponsored rider in Europe, back in 1991. That seconds!
meant Bridgestone was on board, ELF gave me a
fuel contract, Italy’s Braking took care of stopping
the bike and with various other mostly magazine
sponsors, I was ready.
In the first session I made sixth on the grid out

SO BEFORE HE RECRUITED
VALENTINO ROSSI, JORGE
LORENZO AND QUARTARARO,
HE FIRST RECRUITED ME!
amcn.com.au 63
YAMAHA EUROPE TRX850R
of the 36 qualifiers, before the heavens opened,
and it rained for the next two days! That at least
gave me some wet-weather practice on the TRX
in the second session, which revealed the TRX
was an incredibly easy bike to ride in the rain.
Yamaha developed that then-unique motor to give
Peterhansel traction in sand, but if it works in the
dirt, it’ll work in the rain, too.
This allowed me to win the TRX850R’s debut
race by the embarrassingly large margin of 25
seconds, from Dutchman Marcel Lamers’ 900
Ducati two-valver, and Germany’s Rolf von der
Weiden on his BMW Boxer.
Okay, in the rain is one thing. How about the
dry? We got the answer six days later in front of
a 20,000-strong crowd at the historic Hengelo
public roads circuit, by which time more victory
contenders had joined the party. The first Ducati
888 Superbike fitted with carbs by Rico Racing
Research owner Rico Mertens appeared there
with Dutch-Indonesian rider Lee Saman, and
proved to have performance almost identical to
the Yamaha’s – so much so that, although I led all
the way to the chequered flag after qualifying on
pole, I was locked in combat with Lee throughout.
The Yamaha’s beautifully linear clutch action
1. Cathcart takes the flag made the difference, allowing me to get the jump
in the TRX’s debut race on him off the line into the first turn on the fast
by 25 seconds but narrow track, while the clean power delivery
2. Our favourite Pom from low down out of the three first-gear turns
shows off his wet- helped offset the 23kg weight penalty that the
weather prowess Yamaha carried versus the stripped-down 148kg
3. Simple is best; Ducati. Remember, the TRX was a roadbike
beneath the vestigal turned into a racer, with little attempt at serious
bodywork, the TRX was weight reduction; the half-fairing was fibreglass,
nowhere near exotic even the fuel tank was the original steel one,
TRIXIE WOULD PULL LIKE A
TRACTOR FROM 3000RPM,
RUNNING UP TO 9500RPM
64 amcn.com.au
contributing to a dry weight of 171kg compared to
just 188kg for the street TRX850 with lights and a
horn. But despite the weight differential, Saman’s
Duke couldn’t outbrake me, especially with no
slipper clutch back then, so he risked getting
terminal rear wheel chatter if he tried too hard.
Some ruthless work in traffic allowed me to
open up a seven-second gap by the finish of the
Hengelo race, and some extra satisfaction came
from our race times, which would have put me
sixth in the Dutch Open Superbike round run the
same day – not bad for a carburetted twin!
The tight Hengelo hairpins illustrated the TRX’s
seamless power delivery and good tractability,
where to exit the near-walking pace turns I could
simply twist the throttle wide open while hardly
touching the clutch lever. Trixie would pull like
a tractor from as low as 3000rpm, running up to
the 9500rpm rev-limiter without a hiccup, and
no falloff in power over the 8500rpm power peak.
This allowed me not only to get good drive out
of the slow turn, but also to save gear-changes
by holding a gear on the six-speed close-ratio
gearbox Sato had concocted from the Yamaha
parts bin. The shift action was really precise – I
never missed a gear on the bike – and the ratios
ideal, so I could keep the engine running above
7000 rpm, where you could feel the power curve
steepen slightly.
Sadly, though, despite further race wins at
Mettet, Eemshaven and a truly dominant victory
at my favourite circuit, Spa-Francorchamps, I
wasn‘t able to clinch the title – partly because of a
date clash. It was agreed from the start with YME
that I’d have to miss one round of the eight-race
Dutch Open to race the Saxon-Triumph in the
BEARS World Series support race at the Brands
Hatch World Superbike round, meaning I’d have
no spare Dutch Open points-scoring round to
discard. At Assen in August I’d been out-powered
by Saman’s ever-improving RRR Ducati, finishing
a well-beaten best of the rest that was Trixie’s
first defeat in her four-month race career. But in
2

BUT WHAT
HAPPENED NEXT?
THIS LOVE STORY, HAD A FAIRYTALE ENDING
3
DUE TO OTHER commitments and a change in the BEARS
regulations in 1997, I clinched a deal with Yamaha Europe to
contest the inaugural Sound of Thunder World Series on their
Over-developed TRX850R racer, as well as for another sortie to
Daytona – apparently, beating the Ducatis there the previous
year had gone down well in Japan. The only condition was I
had to repaint Trixie in the same red-and-black livery as their
World Superbike/Supersport race teams.
In preparation for the World Series, Yamaha Europe sent the
engines back to Japan. They arrived just in time for Daytona,
and as soon as I rode out onto the Speedway for the first
practice session, I knew there was a significant improvement
in performance. Over had not only delivered an extra 6hp
at the top end, they’d also fattened midrange and improved
engine acceleration and pickup, thanks to the reduced inertia
of lighter engine components. That allowed us to pull one
tooth higher gearing than in 1996 and we touched 272km/h,
some going for a modified budget-priced half-faired twin.
This gave me some hope as we fronted on the grid headed
by Andrew Stroud’s Britten and containing no less than 14
Ducati Superbikes, three of which would go on to qualify for
Daytona 200 later in the week. With her half-naked looks and
slant-twin motor in full view, Trixie had a second-row grid
position, and took full advantage of it to grab second place
behind Stroud’s Britten going into the first turn. On the banking
the Britten just motored away from me, but after I got a good
drive out of the infield, just one Ducati came past me; Jeff
Jennings on his factory-built 955 Corsa Foggy Replica.
One vital first-lap Daytona must-do is give yourself lots of
braking room at the Chicane. With a full fuel load and big draft
from a field of bikes in front of you, it’s easy to go in too deep.
That’s what Jennings didn’t do. He missed the entry, hit the dirt
on the outside, crossed the track in front of me – and somehow
saved it! I looked behind me exiting the Chicane and saw he’d
held everyone else up – now I had a gap back to third.
I put my head down and rode the next three laps as hard
as possible, using every last rpm on the banking and drifting
the rear Bridgestone in the infield and finished second. To be
beaten by an exotic racebike like the Britten was no disgrace
– but for a modified street bike to beat the world’s top twin-
cylinder customer Superbikes said a lot.
The 50-mile Sound of Thunder World Series 15-lap main
event was the next day. Stroud was joined by Mike Barnes on
a new customer Britten. Trixie and I beat Stroud to the first turn
after he pulled a wheelie but he and Barnes soon breezed past
us, so I rode to third place, 15 seconds ahead of fourth place, a
good start in the 1997 Sound of Thunder title.
And that’s indeed what happened, with a series of race
wins in Europe interrupted only by a fourth place in the Assen
round in June, after being slowed while in second place by an
ignition fault which mysteriously imposed a 6000rpm rev limit
on the engine! But I won the other four rounds in the six-race
series to give Yamaha Europe and Trixie a title at last.
YME had a nice way of saying thanks – which is why the
Over Yamaha TRX850 has been locked up safe and sound in
my garage for the past 25 years. We still enjoy a date together
from time to time at a nearby racetrack, though; got to stay
tuned up for Vintage ProTwins when it happens!

amcn.com.au 65
YAMAHA EUROPE TRX850R

1 2 4

tracked him in the early laps, before stepping up

TRIXIE’S WET- the pace and grabbing the lead. But on lap six of
10 – I tried to change gear down the back straight

WEATHER POISE
ALLOWED ME TO
OPEN UP A 2sec LEAD
the next race at Tolbert a week later on the tight
2.5km public roads circuit with three first-gear
turns, where we geared Trixie to use only the
bottom four ratios, it conveniently rained half an
1. AC and the Vee
hour before the start. Trixie’s wet-weather poise
Two Australia team in
Florida in 1996 after two allowed me to open up a two-second lead after
Daytona race wins on just two laps, seemingly set for another win – until
Ducati Supermono and it started jumping out of bottom gear!
Yamaha TRX, and one Being forced to use second gear to exit those
at Roebling with Bimota slippery bends meant Ducati-mounted Lamers
DB2R-01 and Saman both overtook me, as I had to be
2. On the way to a dry careful slipping the clutch to coax the engine out
win at Hengelo in 1995 of turns. Lamers DNF’d on the final lap, but it still
3. The 1996 Assen meant Saman was now leading the points table.
ProTwins rostrum; L to But it was his turn to DNF at Spa with a blown
R, Pater Jansen (Guzzi), motor, meaning we went to the final round at
winner Stephen Briggs Assen with me back in the lead, 136 to 115. I only
(Britten) and AC in third needed 11th place to win the title.
4. Over’s Kensei Sato After qualifying on pole 0.61sec ahead of Lee, I
and couldn’t find the lever. A 10-cent split pin
had broken in the gear linkage, leaving the lever
dangling, and Trixie stuck in third. It was the
cruellest disappointment of my racing career.
Yamaha Europe was very understanding,
despite several staff making the trip to Assen to
watch me hopefully clinch the title. But I wasn’t
prepared for what happened next. Their PR
soundings had been so positive that they decided
to import the TRX850 into Europe for 1996 – and
they decided to reward me for my efforts by
paying for me to take Trixie to Daytona for Cycle
Week 1996.
My focus shifted to teaming up with Brook
Henry of Vee Two Australia to contest World
Superbike’s FIM Supermono Cup support
championship, and the BEARS World Series, this
time with a factory-supplied Bimota DB2R with
Vee Two Australia motor. But Brook was up for
looking after Trixie at Daytona for me, figuring
it’d entail little more than topping up the fuel tank
and pumping up the tyres…
The two-day Cycle Week opener saw the
Formula 1 ProTwins race held on Monday,
essentially for Modified Production motorcycles,

66 amcn.com.au
 REDEFINING
HYPER SP OR T PERF ORMANCE .

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C ATA L O G U E Ficeda Accessories AU – 1300 437 711 @dunloptyresanz | @ficedaaccessories
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 YAMAHA EUROPE TRX850R

with the Open Twins race on Tuesday, for

anything with a twin-cylinder four-stroke
motor. That meant no Brittens in the F1 race –
but conversely there were platoons of Ducati
homologation specials, including several of the
new 916SPS Foggy street replicas. Still, with
Trixie trapped at 258km/h at Mettet the year
before, maybe I wouldn’t be totally smoked.
But because of time constraints there’s no
qualifying, grid positions for the afternoon race
were decided on the previous year’s points, I was
starting from the back of the grid.
But halfway through practice, the TRX motor
blew. Disaster! Our five-strong team descended
on the bike to swap motors against the clock –
one of them fortuitously being Norm Williams,
the manager of Yamaha’s top dealership in
Perth who’d come over with Brook to wrench
the Bimota. We’d left the spare engine in our
Daytona Beach workshop, but my mate Jeff Craig
ran every red light to get it, returning in time to
see the blown engine leaving the frame. The race
was called, but Trixie wasn’t ready. Kitted up,
I stood by the pit entrance. The 40-strong field
set off on their warmup lap just as Brook Henry
arrived on Trixie, blipping the throttle to clear a
path. Game on!
“HOW ON EARTH DID
YOU MAKE A DIRT
BIKE GO SO FAST?”
With no tyre warmers back then I forced
myself to take it easy in the infield turns before
dialling up the heat on the banking. The engine
was running strongly and I’d done enough laps
in practice to know we had the gearing right. I
used every last rev in every gear to claw my way
up the race order, until two laps from the end I hit
the front, nailing the leading 916 Ducati on the
brakes off the Tri-Oval banking into Turn One.
When I looked behind four turns later exiting the
infield I saw he was already too far back to be able
to draft past me, though from there to the flag
were the most anxious – and satisfying – two laps
of my entire racing career.
I still have this memory of the Ducati riders I
shared Victory Lane with looking at Trixie with
this ‘How the hell?’ expression on their faces. They
weren’t alone, commentator Richard Chambers
said it the best: “Alan Cathcart, how on earth did
you guys make a dirt bike go so damn fast?”

1 2

1. Cathcart gets to grips

with ‘Trixie’ during
practice for the ’95
race at Assen
2. AC and the Over team
celebrate winning the
1995 Hengelo Dutch
Open round
3. A year later Sir Al
and Over’s TRX won the
ProTwins Formula 1 race
at Daytona – from the
back of thje grid!

68 amcn.com.au
 070 FAST
TALK REMY GARDNER

CHASING
T INTERVIE ON
NEIL MO
RRIS
RAPHY
N
T
PHOTOG
OOSE
GOLD&G

e
Undaun ride in 2022, R 2
o to G P 1 M o t o
aM p s t h e 202 . But
e r to es i n
Gardn ip fiv e rac
a m p io nsh een a long
Ch i n s , it ’s b
pl a
as he ex top
ad t o t he
ro

70 amcn.com.au
N
 REMY GARDNER

n the whole, things are going

pretty well for Remy Gardner
right now. The Australian sits
at the top of the Moto2 World
Championship after five races.
His adaption to Aki Ajo’s all-
conquering set-up that has
dominated both of grand prix
racing’s junior categories in the season’s opening
stage has been seamless. And although he insists
nothing is confirmed, a MotoGP seat with Tech 3
KTM in 2022 is all but his.
“I can’t complain, can I? Everything is going well,”
Remy told us on the eve of the Spanish Grand Prix.
“A good start to the season. Consistency is key here.
Even if there is no podium, I still have to finish races
and get points. It’s a long year ahead. We’ve only just
started. At the moment it’s just about finishing races
and racking up as many points as I can.”
So far, he’s done exactly that. A first win of the
year has proved elusive. But the 23-year old from
Sydney has ground out results when necessary
(a third in Portugal, fourth in Jerez). And on the
occasions he has had pace to win, Gardner has given
it a go without risking it all. Crucially, he hasn’t once
looked flustered since becoming the first Australian
to lead grand prix’s intermediate category since
Gregg Hansford in 1978. His second place in France
was his 11th consecutive top-seven result.
It hasn’t always been like this. Remy has come 1
a long way since he first rocked up in the paddock
as a baby-faced 16-year old in 2014 with father
Wayne in tow. Then he was shy, a little moody, and
unafraid of calling out his below-par equipment
(normally with an f-bomb or two). It’s all a far cry
from the laidback figure who is now as comfortable
in his own skin as he is in front of the media
glare, and is careful to talk up the experience and
expertise of his technicians around him.
But there were some tough years along the way.
Gardner freely admits there were times when
he doubted whether he would make it this far.
But 2019 was his breakthrough year. A switch to
the SAG team, and more importantly to a Kalex
chassis – the brand that has won each of the past
eight Moto2 rider’s titles – saw Remy start the year
well, scoring his first podium in Argentina. He even
turned down the chance to replace Johann Zarco in 2 3
KTM’s MotoGP squad midway through the season,
opting instead to become a winner in Moto2 first. “The change probably came at the start of 1. In 2015 Gardner was
But the season was far from consistent. He last year. In Qatar we finished fifth. We got back already growing big
suffered seven DNFs. In the autumn of that year, his to Jerez and we finished seventh. Then in the enough to struggle on his
team ran into financial difficulties. Alfred Willeke, second race in Jerez and in Brno I struggled, Moto3 Mahindra
the crew chief Remy charged with his improvement, mainly because of the extra heat. But we were 2. Remy was just a pup
was poached by a rival team. It all looked a little still getting points. when he started racing in
bleak come season’s end. And many questioned if it “Then in Austria we were back on the podium. Spain at 14
was wise to turn that MotoGP offer down. But I did have one crash in Austria, in the first race. I 3. Gardner, R, with Jack
But for 2020 he came back refreshed. Ajo – Jack was quite annoyed with myself. It was a stupid crash Miller and dad Wayne
Miller’s personal manager – became a personal on my part and it shouldn’t have happened. Going
adviser. His results soon kicked on. Asked what the from there, I was kind of angry with myself and
secret was to his recent run after his second-place said I couldn’t let that happen again. Unfortunately,
at Le Mans, Remy didn’t need to think about it. in Misano I had that crash in warm-up, which was
“Experience,” he stated. “Crashing. Hurting a bit unexpected. I missed those races.
myself. Flying through the air at 260km/h “But when I got back from there it was back to
doesn’t help!” business. I just built on my confidence. You learn
And in our conversation in Spain, he believed the from your mistakes, don’t you? You’ve got to keep
recent run of results was over a year in the making. moving forward.”

72 amcn.com.au

4 6
Gardner’s recent success has come in spite
of one glaring disadvantage: weight. In a class
designed for parity, in which all 30 riders compete
aboard the same spec Triumph 765 engines, the
same Dunlop tyres, the same gearbox and the same
electronic aids, stature can play a big role. Remy
weighs in at 72 kilograms, two more than the next
heaviest rider and seven above the class average.
Compare that to chief rivals Raul Fernandez (63kg),
Marco Bezzecchi (61kg) and Sam Lowes (65kg).
“One hundred percent, that factor is always
there,” he said. “Before I focussed on that a lot and
thought, ‘Poor me.’ I always complained about it.
But what am I going to do? I’m a big boy and that’s it.
“I’ve tried losing weight, but first of all, I wouldn’t
be really happy. And second of all, I wouldn’t have
the strength and the energy to finish races. There are
other good things about being a bit heavier and a bit
5
“CRASHING. HURTING MYSELF.
FLYING THROUGH
THE AIR AT 260KM/H
DOESN’T HELP!”
4. WG has been a great bigger. I can finish the races at the end with a bit more
supporter of his son but stamina. It’s easier for me to move the bike around
chooses to stay very sometimes. In the end, I focussed on the positives
much in the background and try to make the most of the weight and try to
5. Hands and knees; manage the disadvantages to my best capabilities.
Remy’s 2015 French GP “For sure, there are weekends when it penalises
ended with a fall me more. Even in the race in Portugal, I struggled
6. By 2017 Gardner had more with that extra heat. I was scorching up the
moved on, to Moto2 and tyres a bit more. You’ve got to learn, move forward
Tech3 and focus on what we can do and not worry about
something that is not really changeable.”
His surname may give the impression he’s had
it easy with a career in motorcycle racing laid out
for him on a plate. And, yes, when he sought a
move to Europe as a teenager, he found a seat in
the Spanish Moto3 championship, where rides
can cost up to 250,000 euros ($400,000) for just one
year. But the move from Australia at 14 years of age
amcn.com.au 73
 REMY GARDNER

was far from straightforward. Having set up base

in the seaside town of Sitges, 30 minutes outside
Barcelona on Spain’s east coast, Remy soon found
this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. A lack
of friends, language skills and home comforts all
contributed to some pretty lonely years.
“First of all, it’s extremely tough for Aussies to
come to Europe and make the move,” he says.
“First, it’s financially. Second, it’s on the other
side of the world, with different languages. We did
it anyway. Many people probably think I’m here
because of Wayne and that’s it. But it isn’t like that.
I think sometimes doors have been closed rather
than opened. It was tough. There were a lot of years
when it was looking really bleak. Also, the difference
of level that I had to make up for was incredible.
But I hung in there, kept working and stuck out
the tough years. I guess, it’s all working now. What
doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?
“(I’ve been) 10 years in Spain. The first two were
really quite difficult. I think that’s the same for
anyone that does something like that. There was
a point when we were thinking about going back
home. It’s such a different lifestyle. I didn’t speak
1. Gardner started his
run of solid results with the language. I didn’t know anybody. And I was
the SAG team last year only 14 years old at that point. I had all my friends
2. The 2021 season in Australia. I had all my things there and I’d go
started with two second surfing all the time. All of a sudden, I didn’t have
places under lights in those things anymore. It was really tough.
Qatar “Then in the school that I went to I didn’t really
3. Gardner fights off Joe have any friends – they were just weird tennis
Roberts (#16) players. But I started to get to know people and I had
2
a few mates. When I was about 16 or 17 everything
was good. I was just being a normal teenager, riding
my skateboard with my mates down the streets
and getting into all kinds of mischief in the town.
“From about 18 or 19 everything was a bit
smoother. I started to learn the language a bit
better. Honestly, I’d say the last three years I
started to settle in and feel like it was home. I have
a Spanish girlfriend now as well, which helps with
the language!”
Those early years of settling in were reflected
with similar struggles on the track. After three
wildcard appearances at the end of 2014, Gardner
made his full-time debut in Moto3 the following
year. But riding Mahindra’s underpowered racer
for CIP, one of the class’s less resourced teams, was
more than challenging. He was regularly one of
the slowest through the speed traps, and managed
just one point-scoring finish – a fine 10th in front of

74 amcn.com.au
 “THERE WAS A POINT WHEN WE
WERE THINKING ABOUT GOING
BACK HOME. IT’S SUCH A DIFFERENT
I DIDN’T SPEAK THE
LIFESTYLE.
LANGUAGE. I DIDN’T KNOW
ANYBODY. AND I WAS ONLY
14 YEARS OLD”

home fans at Phillip Island – all year.

3
“For sure, that year on the Mahindra was quite
depressing,” he said. “It was a tough year. But I
think I learned more about how to ring everything
out of a bike in that year than in any other. It gave
me that self-confidence to think, ‘Man, I’m faster
than about 80 percent of the guys here.’ They were
just whipping me down the straight. That gave me
the confidence but it was also very frustrating. It
taught me how to ride the absolute ring out of the
bike. And sometimes you need to do that.
“I went back to the Spanish Championship on
Moto2 the following year, because I didn’t have a
team. That was also tough. But I seemed to adapt
quickly to the Moto2 bike. I was starting to get big
and with the Moto2 bike that wasn’t really a problem.
Then in the CEV straight away, even with a dodgy
team, I was on it and winning races. It just came to
me quite easily, the big bikes. And it took off from

amcn.com.au 75
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All you have to do is subscribe to the AMCN E-Newsletter to be in the draw – it’s that simple.

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there. Luckily, I got that Tasca ride (in the World
Championship) halfway through the season.”
But the toughest moment was still to come.
Gardner secured a seat in Hervé Poncharal’s Tech3
Moto2 team for 2017. Viewed in terms of his results
alone, it was far from disastrous. Seven point-
scoring finishes dotted the year, including a battling
ninth place in the rain at Brno. But his 21st overall
paled compared to the efforts of then teammate Xavi
Vierge, who was 10 places ahead in the championship
standings. What’s more, the Catalan took the
Mistral 610 chassis to a wet-weather podium finish in
Japan. That contrived to put Remy’s future in doubt.
“I’ve got to say: I did have two tough years in
Tech3. The first year with Hervé was extremely
difficult. There was a point when he was about to
not give me a second chance. That was probably
the hardest moment for me in my GP career at the
end of the first Tech3 year. Xavi was having good
results and I was in the shit.
“Then Bo (Bendsneyder) came (to the team at
the end of 2017) and in the first test he was quicker
than me. I didn’t know what was going on. There
was a point when I thought, ‘Maybe this isn’t for me.’
“But at the end of that test at the end of that year I
tried Bo’s bike. We tried everything on my bike and
nothing worked. We thought, just get on it and do
three laps for 15 minutes at the end of the day. I went
out and did the fastest ever lap on the Tech3 bike
around Valencia with old tyres. I was like, ‘Guys, this
is a completely different f***ing bike. What is this?’
They said, ‘It’s the same.’ I was like, ‘It’s not. I can
tell you that. Look at the f***ing lap time!’
“So that got the inspiration going again. That
got me fired up. I thought, okay, it’s been this
frame I’ve been riding all year. That next year they
brought three bikes. They said, you’re going to try
all of them. You’re going to take the best frame with
the best swingarm and put it all together. We did
that and I think I crashed it on the second lap and
destroyed it in the first test! But we took what we
had left and that was the bike. We had some decent
results. There were some tough races, and some
races when the bike worked better than others. I
REMY GARDNER
‘GUYS, THIS IS A COMPLETELY
DIFFERENT F***ING BIKE. WHAT IS
THIS?’ THEY SAID, ‘IT’S THE SAME.’
I WAS LIKE, ‘IT’S
NOT. I CAN TELL YOU
THAT. LOOK AT THE
F***ING LAP TIME!’
started getting my mojo together.
“I’ve had a few ups and downs, that’s for sure.
The first year on the Tech 3 bike I broke my ankle.
Then the next year I was doing motocross and I
just blew my leg apart. That was a tough time. I was
sitting in hospital thinking, ‘this is over now.’ Right
when I needed results to renew contracts, I was
sitting there in hospital with a million screws in my
leg. I thought to myself, ‘are you going to cry here?
Or are you going to get up and try and get back as
soon as possible?’ I was working hard every day on
the legs and managed to get back on the bike in five
weeks – and in the points.”
Gardner has always made riding through the pain
sound nonchalant. Away from the track, he relaxes
by getting his hands dirty in his rapidly expanding
workshop in Sitges. There are no selfies in sight.
As well as sculpting, skating and surfing, Remy
is a keen mechanic and counts restoring old cars
among his interests. In a world of Instagram posing
and training selfies with designer branding, Remy 1. Gardner has slotted
into the Red Bull Ajo
stands out as something of a throwback. As he told team this year as well as
us, that curiosity to build and design has been there he possibly could have
since he was young. hoped for
“I’ve always been a hands-on guy if I’m honest 2. He missed three races
with you,” he said. “When I was about 10 years old I in 2018 while recovering
was on the internet and saw these plans for big from a broken ankle
amcn.com.au 77
REMY GARDNER

garden chairs. I downloaded

the plans one day, printed
IT’S JUST LIKE THE GOLDEN
them out and was like, ‘dad, TICKET IN FRONT OF ME, ISN’T
I want to build this.’ So he
went out, bought me the IT? NOTHING IS CONFIRMED.
wood and the tools – I was
only 10. I built this massive RIGHT NOW, WE JUST HAVE
garden chair, a beautiful
thing that I’ve still got in TO FOCUS ON OURSELVES AND
1
Australia. I’ve always had an
interest, I always worked on OUR JOB IN MOTO2. I’M
SURE IF WE DO OUR
my pocket bikes. Usually, I
was just breaking stuff in the

JOB WELL, GOOD

beginning. But it’s always
been there.
“When I left school when
I was 16 to go with the bikes
and train, I was taking care
of my own training bikes.
I was doing my own bikes
THINGS WILL COME”
and thought I needed the tools to weld and create
parts. I got a welder for my 16th birthday. Then I
started making skateboard ramps out of steel and
2 wood. I also did some computerised design for my
ramps. One thing led to another. I was doing some
sculptures just for fun. And I built a machine that
coils up ropes for wakeboarding – like a winch.
I bought a go-kart engine and put in this torque
converter. I had all these things machined up. I’d
then park the thing on the beach, swim out, get
towed out of the water and then do wakeboarding
1. Some have commented on the beach – that was pretty cool.
that if there was a World “Then the engineering side was interesting me
Championship for which more. I built a fast 250 two-stroke. Then I bought
you had to build your my car. And with the engine swap, the (car design)
own bikes, Gardner would
started from there. Bit by bit I’ve been learning how
win it, easily
to do more of the engineering. I use a lot of solid
2. If you are keen of works, 3D printing and machining. Now I’ve got a
eye you would spot
big workshop with mills, lathes and car-lifts. I’m
that Remy is sitting on
a 1960s Volvo Amazon, looking at a CNC mill next – it’s a big workshop.
into which he has fitted a “For sure it helps (to unwind). Everyone’s got to
turbocharged Mitsubishi have their little hobby. I’m still training and on the
Evo motor... bike a lot. I don’t put it up on social media so much. I
don’t really care that much about Instagram and that
stuff. For sure it helps me disconnect. Sometimes I
just get in there, lock the door and put the phone on
silent. I don’t want to hear from anyone. Just leave
me alone for eight hours. I can focus on something
else and be on my own. It’s quite nice. It helps me
disconnect from the bike world.”
That may come in useful when so much talk
surrounds his future. Gardner rides in Aki Ajo’s
team, but his contract is with KTM. And the
Austrian factory was clear that a seat in MotoGP
would be waiting for him if his early results this
year were up to scratch.
So, does the Australian see a possible ride in
the premier class as added pressure or extra
motivation? His response is immediate.
“It’s not pressure. It’s just like the golden ticket in
front of me, isn’t it? Nothing is confirmed. Step by
step. Right now, we just have to focus on ourselves
and our job in Moto2. I’m sure if we do our job well,
good things will come.”
With the results in place, you have to believe
Gardner will be in MotoGP next year. And no one
can say he hasn’t earned it.

78 amcn.com.au
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secondhand STORY & PHOTOGRAPHY
AMCN ARCHIVES

SUZUKI GSX-R1000K1 2001

2 4

Game changer
The 2001 Suzuki GSX-R1000 represented a major milestone in
the modern superbike category – and was just as important to
the marque as the 1985 GSX-R750
THIS WAS THE most important motorcycle The increased strength of the 1000’s chassis

1
in the world 20 years ago. When Suzuki was achieved by the aluminium frame spars The GSX-R1000 had a
released the mighty GSX-R1000 in 2001, having 0.5mm-thicker outside walls, although different swingarm and
the marque added another chapter to the the bracing on the 750 chassis was eliminated damper to the 750, but
evolution of the superbike category. The on the 1000. The 1000’s swingarm was the the bikes’ dimensions
machine joined such evolutionary greats as same length as the 750’s, although the main were identical

the 1985 Suzuki GSX-R750, the 1992 Honda
CBR900RR and the 1998 Yamaha YZF-R1 as
truly important machines, ones that people
remember many years down the track.
The year prior to the 1000’s release in 2000
saw the rebirth of the GSX-R750, rewriting the
750 rule book with the stunning GSX-R750Y,
2
arm section construction was changed from The four-cylinder
a single-square type to a double square for a motor was just 14mm
little more internal bracing and rigidity. taller than the 750
The forks and rear shock were carried but with beefed-up
over from the 750 to the 1000 however the internals to cope with
forks received heavier springs as well as the extra power
increased compression damping. The shock

3
also came in for some attention with a In 2001 the GSXR was
the gem that became the template for the
2mm-thicker piston rod (16mm), while the king of the kids for
1000 in 2001.
spring and damping rate were reviewed, power, with 160 horses
Much of the 750’s design was carried over to
with less compression damping but with giving a top speed
the new king of the Suzuki sportsbike range.
increased rebound. (claimed) of 278km/h
The chassis geometry of the 1000 was exactly

4
the same as the 750 with the same rake (24°), The 1000cc powerplant was pretty much an One of the few weak
trail (96mm) and wheelbase (1410mm), enlarged 750 donk, to the point where it was points of the K1 model
although changes were made to the 1000’s the same width and just 14mm higher and was the brakes, which
frame rigidity with a six percent increase to 6mm longer front to rear – with an increase of would benefit from
cope with the extra punishment dished out by just 4kg in overall weight. The same cylinder- upgrades to pads and
the 33-percent larger engine. head was used, with intake and exhaust steel brake lines

80 amcn.com.au
 PRICE
GUIDE
New price
$18,990
Secondhand
$4450-$6000

WHAT TO
LOOK FOR
These are now 20 years
old so you have to be pretty
diligent with your inspections.
The usual bearing checks
(swingarm pivot, steering
head) should be carried
out, plus check the chain/
sprocket, brakes, lights and
switches. After this much
time the titanium-nitrate
coating on the forks might
start to go as well.
Check for body panels that
don’t line up and scratches
on the frame, fork legs and
swingarm. Let the bike idle
from cold off the sidestand
for a few minutes and watch
what comes out of the
exhaust when you give the
throttle a blip. If there are
copious amounts of blue
smoke emitting, the rings are

Suzuki didn’t reinvent the wheel, it

worn and the engine will need
rebuilding.

just made it a hell of a lot faster

SERVICE
INTERVALS
The 2001 Suzuki GSX-
R1000 had its first service
at 1000km with the engine
oil and filter replaced, plus
a general checkover of all
bolts, chain and sprocket, idle
speed, fuel lines, carried out.
The second service came at
6000km and was essentially
a repeat of the 1000km
operation. At 12,000km
the coolant and brake fluid
was replaced (plus a repeat
of the 6000km service). At
18,000km, along with the
repeat of the 6000km service,
the air filter was replaced,
while at 24,000km the spark
plugs, brake lines/brake
fluid, coolant and fuel lines
were replaced, the throttle
bodies balanced and valve
clearances checked and
adjusted.
valves sitting at 12° and 13°, respectively.
Where the difference between this and
the 750 sat was in the double-overhead
camshafts, which had a longer duration
and lift – 9.00mm to 8.7mm on the inlet and
8.0mm to 7.3mm on the exhaust and, even
though the crankshaft width was the same
on the 1000 to the 750, the 1000’s crank had
larger diameter journals and crank pins and a
larger stroke for the shot-peened conrods.
An air-cooled oil cooler rather than a water-
cooled one was employed on the 1000, and
Suzuki also used the Pulsed secondary Air
Injection (PAIR) system to reduce emissions
by injecting fresh air from the airbox through
the PAIR valve into the exhaust to ignite any
unburnt fuel.
Fuel injection on the ram air-assisted
monster was now pretty much the norm
(the Yamaha YZF-R1 and Kawasaki ZX-9R
still used carbies), with Suzuki using their
Secondary Dual Throttle Valve (SDTV)
controlled by the ECU to provide more linear
throttle response.
Suzuki didn’t reinvent the wheel with
the GSX-R1000, it just made it a hell of a lot
faster. The bike won pretty much everything
it contested from magazine shootouts
to the racetrack, with a certain Mr Giles
decimating the competition to win his
second straight Aussie Superbike title (he
did it again in 2002).
During AMCN’s annual superbike shootout
in 2001 (AMCN Vol 50 No 17), the new GSX-R
was put head-to-head with the Honda
CBR929, the Kawasaki ZX-9R and the Yamaha
YZF-R1. The Suzuki scored the highest top
speed, fastest quarter-mile time and top
speed, fastest 0-160km/h time, top gear roll-
on and lap time. The only test it didn’t come
out on top was the 0-100km/h time.
True to form however, Suzuki didn’t
rest on its laurels and began work almost
immediately on a new 1000 ready for 2003.
But that shouldn’t take away from what is a
truly outstanding motorcycle. Two decades
on it’s still a true road weapon, and more than
capable of slicing up a trackday with ease.

amcn.com.au 81
howto WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY
AMCN ARCHIVES

U-turns

Chuck a U-
SAFETY
FIRST
T PPING IN
A reliable feet-up u-turn is crucial for man
a big bike without damage. Here’s h w
Most riders learn this skill actually an important part point of capsizing. And refresher course on how
at learner level because of your riding skill arsenal, dropping a bike even at to u-turn a big bike, even
you have to, to pass your something you may realise this low speed can be very something the size of a BMW
training – then promptly as you tiptoe your way expensive. Not to mention K 1300 R. Like everything,
forget it. U-turns are across a busy road on the embarrassing… Here’s a it’s easy once you know how.

Start here

▲ STEP 1 U-turn skills are similar to those used when riding slowly.
You need to set the throttle just above idle and forget it. It stays put after
that. Some bikes need more, some less, but you don’t need to be valve
bouncing for a u-turn, you just need enough to keep the bike moving
forward, because if it is, it shouldn’t fall over. U-turns are slow however,
so you need your clutch, too.
▲ STEP 2 Once the throttle is set, ease out the clutch until the bike is wanting
to drive forward. Like the throttle, once the appropriate clutch position is set,
you can forget it – it doesn’t need to move again. You need enough forward
drive from the throttle and clutch combo to keep the bike moving. It’s when
it stops mid-u-turn that things become all funky. And expensive. But if the
throttle and clutch are set, how do you control the speed?

▲ STEP 3 The rear brake will give you all the speed control you need
for this manoeuvre. If you’re going too fast, leave clutch and throttle
set, but add rear brake, and vice versa. By using the rear brake, the
bike’s balance is retained. If you use front brake, however, it can upset ▲ STEP 4 Once the speed is set, via the combination of rear brake,
the balance of the bike and cause stability problems. You don’t want clutch and throttle, the bike is ready to u-turn. Just be sure to have a
stability problems. Advanced riders will be able to drag a bit of front good, long headcheck before you do, indicate and check your mirror,
brake if needed, but the rear brake should work well enough. because u-turns can be the most dangerous thing you do on a bike.

82 amcn.com.au
 RELAX!
T h is w a s
sho t on a
p ri v a te ro
a d, s o d o n
w o rr y, w e ’t
d id n’t re a
u-t u rn o v ll y
e r d o u ble
u n b rok e n
w h it e
li n e s

▲ STEP 5 Time to start turning. With the throttle and clutch
unmoving, and the rear brake trimming the speed, start turning your
head and leaning the bike into the u-turn. Instead of tipping with the
bike, though, let the bike move underneath you, dirtbike-style.
▲ STEP 6 The bike is close to full lock now, and you can let it do that at a low
speed by counterbalancing the weight with your bodyweight. Keep your
head up for balance, and you should be looking at your exit by now to help
keep the bike turning tight. It’s just like going through a corner – where you
look is where you go.

▲ STEP 7 As the bike is beginning to stand up, you can see how I’ve
not only completed the u-turn well within the narrow road, but also am
beginning to bring my body back in line with the bike. I am still looking
up and where I want to go. If I shut the throttle or pulled in the clutch
in at this point, I’d be in trouble – the key is to keep the bike driving
forward with throttle, clutch and rear brake.
▲ STEP 8 Almost upright and straight again, the boots haven’t left the
footpegs, I have plenty of room left over, and I can now drive the bike
back to the cool twisty section of road I just came through, and do it all
again! This is a quick, safe and effi cient way of turning the bike around,
very, very handy and a smidge cooler than paddling your way across a
road in your best leathers.

Aussie made designs,

from a life on the road

the road beckons visit us online or call

(03) 9786 3445
amcnr
Outback SA

ESSENTIALS
Fuel up at Wilpena Pound
Resort as you head north
as no petrol is available
at Blinman. If you are
riding through the gorge
to Parachilna on the
unsealed road you will
find petrol available there.
Wilpena Pound
Resort offers a range of
accommodation from
camping to well-appointed
cabins. They also have a
general store for supplies
and good dining options
for meals if you are staying
at the resort. For more
information and booking
ring (08) 8648 0048.
Other options include
Arkaba Homestead
and Willow Springs.
Both feature plenty
of hospitality and an

The Flinders Ranges

authentic outback feel.
The self-guided
bushwalks from the resort
into Wilpena Pound itself
are a must-do while you
are in the area. There are a
number of different walks
that range in difficulty from
easy to more strenuous
hikes if you want to work
on your fitness. Most offer
incredible views that make
the effort worthwhile.
If walking is not your
thing, try the short scenic
flights that depart from
the dirt airstrip just up the
road. There are options
for a short loop of the
immediate ranges, or a
longer flight out to some
more distant regions.
These can all be booked at
the resort reception.
HELPING HAND
Carry a good range of
parts and tools if you are
touring this part of the
country. The locals are
always happy to help out,
but the distances between
towns and homesteads
can be considerable.
If you like a bit of awesome scenery with your riding,
Australia’s remote central landscapes take a lot of beating
STORY & PHOTOGRAPHY AMCN ARCHIVES
NORTHERN SOUTH AUSTRALIA features some
of the most spectacular views, particularly around
the Flinders Ranges National Park and, while many
of the bitumen roads through the region are too
straight and flat to qualify as exciting rides, there is
one little gem that has recently been tarred to the
benefit of motorcycle riders.
Heading north from Hawker the road starts
as an open fast straight ride which burns up
most of the 50km to Wilpena, with only a few
good sweeping corners appearing as you get
closer to the Ranges. The turn off to the Wilpena
Pound Resort on your left takes you a short
distance to the resort, where you’ll find fuel and
accommodation available.
The road from the resort up to Blinman has
only recently been sealed and features some good
sections of corners with well-finished bitumen.
The biggest problem is trying to tear your eyes off
the unfolding scenery long enough to concentrate
on the road ahead.
You do need to stay aware as there are is not
only a large kangaroo population, but also a
number of crazy-eyed emus that have a habit of
bolting onto the road with very little warning.
The stretch from Wilpena to Blinman is about
60km and passes a number of worthwhile tourist
attractions, including Sacred Canyon and Willow
Springs. It’s worth stopping for a look while you
are in the area as there are many interesting
places just off the main tourist route.
Blinman dates back to 1859 when copper
was discovered in the area. It only has a small
permanent population now but is a good spot to
stop for lunch, and to check out the interesting
local history.
The Flinders Ranges National Park is a place
most of us will only visit once or twice in a
lifetime due to its remote location. It does tend to
leave a big impression though which stays with
visitors for a long time. Our tip is to take plenty of
photographs while you are there.

84 amcn.com.au
 DETOUR
If you are riding a bike with some
unsealed road capability then several
options are available to you from Blinman.
The road west through Parachilna Gorge is
an easy ride to make a loop run, as well as the
road north-east to Arkaroola, which is a brilliant
place to visit. Adventure bike riders with a bit of
confidence should consider dropping in to Willow
Springs Homestead to traverse the Skytrek loop
track around the property. For $40 per bike you
will get an information pack and instructions to
complete the 70km route around the property. The northern part of So
Allow several hours to get around, as a few uth
Australia offers some stu
sections are first/second gear only, and nning
and unique views
there are many stunning lookout
points to stop and do some
photography.

ge
In the local indigenous langua
t
Wilpena means a “place of ben
s)
fingers” (so watch your finger

The biggest problem is trying to tear

your eyes off the unfolding scenery

Arkaba Station, a forme

r sheep
proper ty, has operated
as a
tourist resort for a deca
de

There are a number of

accommodation options
available at Willow Springs

85
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 Old School
HAMISH COOPER
Young at heart
“EVEN IF YOU don’t like motorcycles much, Beverly Cleary
will soon convince you of their joys, and if you already do
like them this is even more the book for you.”
Sounds like the introduction to the latest glossy, limited-
edition, photo-essay book on custom motorcycles, doesn’t
it? But this is the inside jacket blurb on the Puffin Books
edition of a timeless American classic.
Titled The Mouse and the Motorcycle, it was written by
children’s author Beverly Cleary, one of America’s most
successful writers, with over 90 million of her books selling
worldwide since 1950.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle was first published
in the US in 1965, then in the UK in 1974 with
Puffin Books reprinting it four times between
It spoke
1977 and 1980. I bought my copy during a
road trip at a secondhand shop in Nhill
of speed,
called Lola’s Garage. It had previously been
in the library at St Peter’s Lutheran School
distance and
in Dimboola.
I never read it as a child, but reading it
danger
now to my grandchildren has sparked my
memories of motorcycles as a youngster. Yes,
I was one of those kids who hid a motorcycle
magazine inside a text book during early 1970s
secondary school classes that offered subjects I
had no interest in learning.
But even before that I had a fascination with motorcycles.
So much so that my mother, whose brother was a lifelong
motorcycle enthusiast, bought me a plastic pencil case for
primary school that had a motorcycle decal on its cover.
Cleary’s book clearly states the attraction of motorcycling
as Ralph the mouse sees the toy motorcycle for the first time
from his hole in the skirting board of a rundown hotel in
the California mountains. The boy playing with it is making
motorcycle noises.
“That sound seemed to satisfy something within Ralph,
as if he had been waiting all his life to hear it,” the book
explains. “The sound spoke of highways and speed, of
distance and danger, and whiskers blown back by the wind.”
Later he manages to view the motorcycle up close: “Ralph
stared at it and then walked over and kicked a tyre. Close
up the motorcycle looked even better than he expected.
Ralph walked all the way around it, examining the pair of
chromium mufflers and the engine and the hand clutch. It
even had a little licence plate so it would be legal to ride it.”
Eventually Ralph got a chance to ride the motorcycle:
“Feeling that this was an important moment in his life,
he took hold of the handgrips. They felt good and solid.
Yes, this motorcycle was a good machine all right. He
could tell by the feel. Ralph threw a leg over and sat
jauntily on the seat. He even bounced up and
down. The seat was curved just right. But how
to start the motorcycle? ”
Cleary was 47 years old when she wrote
this book. She died this March past aged
104 years. It is not recorded if she had any
practical experience of motorcycling but
when children used to ask her where she
found her ideas, she would reply: “From
my own experience and from the world
around me.”
Her books have been published in 29
languages, so her timeless descriptions of the
attraction of motorcycling have been spread
around the world.
Major motorcycle manufacturers have started a
worldwide campaign to get pre-teens interested in
motorcycling by offering electric balance bikes. A range of
competing brands entered the Australian market this year.
Youngsters can watch any number of videos to get an
impression of what it might be like to ride one. But only
Cleary actually describes the feeling youngsters will get.
It’s a feeling that has remained with me throughout my
life. It doesn’t matter what the motorcycle is, or where I
ride it, just the experience is a tonic that lifts me every time
I do it.
And the feeling probably started by staring at that pencil
case back in primary school.
1

1. Jack Miller celebrates

MotoGP win #3
2. Miller describes his
GP21 as the best Ducati
he has raced
3. No post-GP test… do
you reckon that fizzy
lasted until Monday?
4. The GP21 seems to
wheelie better than
other Ducatis as well
5. On to Mugello… and
2 an extended contract? 3

4 5
 Revolving Racer
JACK MILLER
Two on the trot
WHERE DO I start after that race at Le Mans? Let’s see. It was
dry, I led. It rained, I fell back. I went off in the gravel and just
about kept it upright. I sped coming into pit lane. I did two
long-lap penalties. I got back to the front. It dried, the wind
picked up like a hurricane and I was on the wrong tyre.
And then I win. I’m on the podium with two French riders,
there’s nobody in the Le Mans stands (because of Covid
restrictions) and I’ve won two races in two weeks.
If your head is spinning after reading that, how do you
reckon mine is? There’s some other stuff I’ve probably
forgotten too. It’s probably not the best word, but ‘hectic’
is one way to describe it. Back-to-back wins, just fantastic.
Somebody pinch me, because I must be dreaming…
I had good pace all weekend no matter what the
weather was doing (and it did a lot), so I just
wanted to get out in front from the start, and
then manage things even if someone went I’d be
back past – just tag onto them and see where
the pace went.
stoked just
I did that. It was all going to plan and
then the rain came four laps in! When it
to be on the
really bucketed down, both me and (Fabio)
Quartararo buttoned off and it was then that
podium at
I nearly lost it, so I just aimed for the gravel
at Turn 11, as I figured there’d be some grip in
Mugello
there. That was pretty hairy.
Once I got back out after the bike swap and did
my long-lap penalties for speeding coming into the pit
lane, I knew there was a long race ahead and I had time to get
back up there. I didn’t have to do it all at once, just keep my
head. I knew I had the pace in the first sector and Turn One
compared to Fabio. So, no need to panic, I just had to keep my
composure.
Eventually I got back to the front with more than half the
race left. Fourteen laps and she was a long old 14 laps from
there, let me tell you. I was able to ride my own race from there
though, and here we are again.
I’ve now won a completely wet race in Assen in 2016, a
completely dry one at Jerez last time, and now a flag-to-flag
one here. Any win in MotoGP feels fantastic but flag-to-flag…
I don’t want to say it’s the most stressful because Jerez was
pretty stressful, being at the front and being chased down, but
this feels different.
You don’t feel physically exhausted, but I think I speak for
all the riders in that you feel a little bit mentally exhausted
because of the focus it takes, and the feeling of trying to
predict what conditions you’ll find at the next corner, corner
after corner, lap after lap. It’s a more mentally draining way
to win. Flag-to-flag is a cool element of our sport. It’s not that
enjoyable at the time because of the stress, but it’s better than
red-flagging a race every time it rains and sitting around
waiting to get started again.
Now you’ll all be asking what’s changed since it
was all going so bad in the first few races? My
confidence now is up for sure, and it’s just
momentum, keeping the ball rolling. Generally
in my career I get stronger the longer the
season goes on, so that’s what happening
here. I’m not worrying about my arm, and
one thing I did after Jerez was keep up my
training like I’m losing rather than winning…
so let’s not change a formula that’s working.
I’d be stoked just to be on the podium in the
next race at Mugello for Ducati – this is the best
Ducati I’ve ridden, for sure. For me they’re the
hardest-working manufacturer there is, so I’m proud
to bring these results back to them.
Le Mans is definitely a place with mixed emotions for me,
I described it as a bit of a love-hate thing even before this
weekend started, and you can see why. I won a Moto3 race
here in 2014 in a big old brawl at the front, had a couple of
crashes the first MotoGP races I did, had that huge crash at
the chicane that nearly killed me in 2017, and then looked on
for a podium last year before the bike cut out.
So, some super big highs and pretty deep lows. Let’s say I
wasn’t the best company after the race here last year! After this
one – let’s just say it’s good we’re not testing here tomorrow
like we were after Jerez!
 In Pit Lane
MICHAEL SCOTT
Crash-fest complacency
IT OUGHT TO be compulsory. Bad weather, that is. It would
take serious meteorological magic to rival the weather-
stricken French GP. The racing was wonderfully unpredictable
in all classes, MotoGP particularly mental, and the reward of a
second win in a row going to Jack Miller, the most marvellously
mental of riders.
But there is a weakness. Racing should break records, and
Le Mans did. Not in lap times, however; nor crowd attendance
(unless you’re counting “lowest-ever”). It recorded its highest-
ever number of crashes.
There were 117, up on the mere 100 there last year, and
more also than the 109 recorded in the bumper year
of 2018. Still a long way short of Misano’s all-time
Is the
record in 2017. Teeming rain combined with
dodgy resurfacing racked an astonishing 140.
Bugatti
That was a one-off. A high crash toll is
normal at Le Mans. As numbers on a list,
circuit really fit
dubbed “a crash fest” you can smile at the
antics. Especially at some sterling efforts. At
for purpose?
opposite ends of the scale Marc Marquez and
Indonesian Moto3 rookie Andi Farid Izdihar
Yes
each had four crashes, Marquez twice in the
race alone. Alex Rins also twice in the race;
Maverick Viñales ridiculously at some 20km/h
while leaving the pits. There were other more than
faintly ridiculous episodes.
Most falls, more than 50, were in Moto3, giving racing’s
learners valuable – er, grounding in the art of slide-don’t-roll.
It’s less amusing for the victims, and rather miraculous that
only two riders were injured badly enough to be ruled out for
the weekend... Moto2 rookie Yari Montella, with a fractured
wrist, and Moto3’s Yuki Kunii (collarbone).
The cost should be considered, and questions asked. Is the
Bugatti circuit really fit for purpose? The answer needs to
be a resounding “yes”, although possibly the camber of the
notorious Turn 3 could be improved.
Are the riders good enough? Again, it must be “yes”. The road
to GP entry is well-controlled, the ability to qualify generally
serves the purpose.
How about the equipment? Here it is not so clear. What is
certain is a high level of standardisation, all aimed at cutting
costs. Fresh regs announced last week mean that next year
frames and swingarms join engines and electronics on the
growing list of items with development frozen.
Most significant is the frozen development of control tyres,
Michelin for MotoGP, Dunlop for Motos 2 and 3. The range they
can offer is severely limited – a choice of three (soft-medium-
hard) slicks front and rear; just two (soft and hard) rain
tyres. More restrictive still: these tyres have to be
homologated before the start of the season.
This is a sharp contrast to what went before, in
the years of the tyres wars – played out in the
premier class between Bridgestone, Michelin
and Dunlop.
Back then, a variety of rubber was available
to suit particular tracks, temperatures
and weather conditions. Michelin, based
in France, had an advantage in being able
to make bespoke track-specific tyres on
Saturday and drive them to the circuit on
Sunday – which played a big part in Valentino
Rossi’s domination, as their most-favoured rider.
Bridgestone, based in Japan, had to ramp up the
science to develop constructions and compounds with a
wider range of performance. There were tyres in between wet
and dry – so-called intermediates, and also hand-cut slicks.
All three tyre manufacturers were patently willing to bear
the cost of R&D, for the ultimate benefit of their production
tyres. But Dorna felt the need to reduce costs and level the
playing field by introducing control tyres in 2009.
The Le Mans crash list is living proof that in this respect,
one size most definitely does not fit all. Especially if the money
saved on tyre development is spent instead on crash repairs
and medical bills.
race report
YOUR FORTNIGHTLY FIX
Round 5 Bugatti Circuit, Le Mans, France, 14-16 May 2021 MotoGP World Championship
Rain
supreme!
Aussie Jack Miller outsmarted the
rain, the drama and the world’s
best to celebrate his second-
consecutive premier-class win
REPORT NEIL MORRISON PHOTOGRAPHY GOLD&GOOSE
VALENTINO ROSSI MAY be
undergoing the worst run of
his 26-year career. But he has
been around long enough to
know how the French Grand
Prix works.
On Friday the Petronas
SRT Yamaha star explained,
“At Le Mans everything
changes in five minutes. So
everything is open.”
It was fitting the main
race in a chaotic weekend,
which saw 117 crashes across
all three classes, should be
decided by the weather, with
MotoGP enjoying its first
flag-to-flag encounter since
August, 2017.
Cracker Jack
ANOTHER EXEMPLARY
weekend from Miller. Le
Mans is one of his favoured
tracks. But his Jerez success
saw him come to France without
pressure on his shoulders. “I
struggle sometimes with self-
96 amcn.com.au
1
In the end, Rossi was out
by only a few minutes and
this contest turned on what
happened within two laps.
It began when the field
rode into “a wall of rain,” to
borrow Jack Miller’s words,
necessitating a bike swap in
pitlane. Winners and losers
were made in the blink of an
eye and it was Miller (Lenovo
Ducati) who held his nerve to
emerge with a second premier-
class win in as many weeks.
This time there was no sense
of benefiting from the good
fortune that accompanied
his previous win in Spain.
Here, Miller shrugged off an
MotoGP 1st
belief,” he admitted on Friday.
“In the past I think I was
sometimes too self-confident.
Trying to mature and be more of
a complete rider, maybe I’ve lost a
bit of this self-belief and knowing
‘I’ve got this.’
2 3
“The old French speed
traps get me all the time”
–Miller after his long-lap penalties
off-track excursion, and made
light of receiving a double
Long Lap Penalty for speeding
in pitlane.
“The old French speed traps
get me all the time,” he joked.
He also put in a devastating
run of laps that not only
carried him past leader Fabio
Quartararo (Monster Energy
Yamaha), but allowed him to
control the gap comfortably
to the late-charging Johann
Zarco (Pramac Ducati) in the
final exchanges.
“Someone needs to pinch
me,” he said after becoming
the first Australian to win
back-to-back premier class
races since Casey Stoner in
2012. “I think I’m dreaming.”
All weekend he was a threat,
a considerable achievement
considering the field
encountered everything the
French weather gods could
throw at them: wet, dry, wet
but drying and dry with
showers. That he avoided
“Definitely I think I was able to
get that back (in Jerez), and just
trying to be freer. The biggest
thing is that I need to remember
I’m just a guy who loves racing
motorcycles. I’m fortunate enough
to do it as my job and to not take
falling prey to the conditions in
the race was another feather in
his cap considering that Ecstar
Suzuki’s title challengers 4
Joan Mir and Alex Rins came
apart at the seams as the
rain arrived. And it wasn’t
just Suzuki’s heads that were
bowed come the race’s end.
For three laps at least, this
was poised to be remembered
as Marc Marquez’s rapid,
glorious return to the top.
From 2014 to 2017, the Repsol
Honda ace was untouchable in
these conditions, triumphing 6
in six out of seven contests
that required at least one bike
swap. His fast reactions and
ability to bring Michelin’s
super stiff tyres quickly up to
temperatures on cold, damp
asphalt have long been the
magic formula – and were in
evidence again here, as he
emerged from the bike swap at
the head of a race for the first
time in 302 days.
But there would be no dream
any moment for granted. Enjoy it
because the happiest place I am in
the world is on my motorcycle.”
Miller waited 1773 days – or 82
races – between his first MotoGP
triumph and his second. His third
followed two weeks after…
1. Jack Miller made it two GP wins in two weeks 2. Another trophy for the Miller pool room 3. While Franco
Morbidelli played catch-up, Pecco Bagnaia stormed through the field to P4 4. Miller’s Ducati was the class of
the field 5. Marc Marquez crashed twice! 6. Fellow Frenchmen Fabio Quartararo and Johann Zarco battle it
out for home race honours 7. ‘Come to France,’ they said. ‘The weather is always great,’ they said...
MotoGP
Track attack – Round 5 finishing positions
8

10
7
3 9
4 11

2 MOTOGP
27 LAPS
12
1
13

14

POS RIDER NAT BIKE TIME

Bugatti Circuit, Le Mans, 1 J MILLER AUS DUC 47m25.473s
France 2 J ZARCO FRA DUC +3.970s
3 F QUARTARARO FRA YAM +14.468s
Circuit length
4 F BAGNAIA ITA DUC +16.172s
4.185km 5 D PETRUCCI ITA KTM +21.430s
6 A MARQUEZ SPA HON +23.509s
2020 winners 7 T NAKAGAMI JPN HON +30.164s
MotoGP D Petrucci 8 P ESPARGARO SPA HON +35.221s
45m54.736s 9 I LECUONA SPA KTM +40.432s
Moto2 S Lowes 10 M VIÑALES SPA YAM +40.577s
41m27.648s 11 V ROSSI ITA YAM +42.198s
→ Moto3 C Vietti
37m37.384s
12
13
L MARINI
B BINDER
ITA
RSA
DUC
KTM
+52.408s
+59.377s
14 E BASTIANNINI ITA DUC +1m02.224s
15 T RABAT SPA DUC +1m09.651s
Did you know? 16 F MORBIDELLI ITA YAM +4 LAPS
Spaniards and Italians have DNF M MARQUEZ (SPA, HON), A ESPARGARO (SPA, APR),
dominated the MotoGP era so M OLIVEIRA (POR, KTM), A RINS (SPA, SUZ), L SAVADORI (ITA,
heavily that the Le Mans podium APR), J MIR (SPA, SUZ).
was the first not to feature POLE POSITION
either nationality since the San F QUARTARARO 1m32.600s
Marino Grand Prix at Misano FASTEST LAP
in 2007. It has only happened F QUARTARARO 1m33.038s
three other times – and all those STANDINGS AFTER 5 OF 19 ROUNDS
previous races were also in 2007. 1 QUARTARARO 80, 2 BAGNAIA 79, 3 ZARCO 68, 4 MILLER 64,
All four of those GPs were won 5 VIÑALES 56, 6 MIR 49, 7 A ESPARGARO 35, 8 MORBIDELLI 33,
by Australians; Casey Stoner, 9 NAKAGAMI 28, 10 P ESPARGARO 25, 11 BINDER 24, 12 A RINS
5 Chris Vermeulen and Jack Miller 23, 13 BASTIANNINI 20, 14 A MARQUEZ 18, 15 MARTIN 17.

MOTO2 MOTO3
25 LAPS 22 LAPS
POS RIDER NAT BIKE TIME P BIKE TIME
1 R FERNÁNDEZ SPA KAL +40m46.101s 1 S GARCIA SPA GAS +42m21.172s
2 R GARDNER AUS KAL +1.490s 2 F SALAC CZE HON +2.349s
3 M BEZZECCHI ITA KAL +4.599s 3 R ROSSI ITA HON +5.589s
4 T ARBOLINO ITA KAL +7.503s 4 J McPHEE GBR HON +7.158s
5 B BENDSNEYDER NED KAL +11.887s 5 A SASAKI JPN HON +14.882s
6 M SCHROTTER GER KAL +27.829s 6 A FERNANDEZ SPA HUS +27.279s
7 A OGURA JPN KAL +27.975s 7 X ARTIGAS SPA HON +27.408s
8 F DiGIANNANTONIO ITA KAL +28.112s 8 P ACOSTA SPA KTM +29.880s
9 S CORSI ITA MVA +28.804s 9 D ÖNCÜ TUR KTM +35.098s
10 J NAVARRO SPA BOS +28.432s 10 R FENATI ITA HUS +36.616s
7 DQ* L DALLA PORTA ITA KAL +28.989s 11 A MIGNO ITA HON +42.347s
11 J BULEGA ITA KAL +29.316s 12 R YAMANAKA JPN KTM +42.739s
12 S CHANTRA THA KAL +28.749s 13 J DUPASQUIER SWI KTM +42.756s
ending. Marquez was thrown very start as the dark closed 13 M RAMIREZ SPA KAL +31.605s 14 I GUEVARA SPA GAS +50.891s
from his machine at the final in. Miller led the pack away 14 A ARENAS SPA BOS +32.080s 15 A IZDIHAR INA HON +52.753s
15 H SYAHRIN MAL NTS +32.571s 16 M KOFLER AUT KTM +53.054s
corner on lap eight as his rear on a dry track with Maverick 16 B BALTUS BEL NTS +33.309s 17 S NEPA ITA KTM +53.568s
tyre came around. He fell a Viñales (Monster Energy 17 L BALDASSARRI ITA MVA +39.036s 18 D FOGGIA ITA HON +1m18.995s
second time for good measure, Yamaha) and Quartararo close 18 J DIXON GBR KAL +41.069s 19 L FELLON FRA HON +1m19.103s
19 C VIETTI ITA KAL +45.599s 20 D BINDER RSA HON +1m54.124s
as he charged through from behind. Takaaki Nakagami 20 T MARCON ITA MVA +1m19.160s 21 K TOBA JPN KTM +1 LAP
18th to 11th after remounting. (LCR Honda), Marquez and DNF C BEAUBIER (USA, KAL), T LUTHI (SWI, KAL), H GARZO (SPA, 22 J ALCOBA SPA HON +4 LAPS
Marquez’s speed in the fast-starting Rins – 15th in KAL), J ROBERTS (USA, KAL), X VIERGE (SPA, KAL), S LOWES DNF C TATAY (SPA, KTM), T MATSUYAMA (JPN, HON), G RODRIGO
(GBR, KAL), S MANZI (ITA, KAL), A LOPEZ (SPA, BOS), (ARG, HON), J MASIA (SPA, KTM), T SUZUKI (JPN, HON), N
these conditions was still qualifying – made up a feisty A FERNANDEZ (SPA, KAL). ANTONELLI (ITA, KTM).
unparalleled yet there was a fight for fourth. *DALLA PORTA’S KALEX WAS 1KG UNDERWEIGHT POST-RACE POLE POSITION
ring-rustiness to his in-race A first lap moment for Pol POLE POSITION A MIGNO 1m47.707s
R FERNANDEZ 1m50.135s FASTEST LAP
management. His subsequent Espargaro (Repsol Honda) FASTEST LAP R ROSSI 1m50.822s
anger spoke of this being an at turn 10 caused Franco R GARDNER 1m36.893s STANDINGS AFTER 5 OF 19 ROUNDS
STANDINGS AFTER 5 OF 19 ROUNDS 1 ACOSTA 103, 2 GARCIA 49, 3 MIGNO 47, 4 FENATI 46,
opportunity lost, especially Morbidelli (Petronas SRT 1 GARDNER 89, 2 R FERNANDEZ 88, 3 BEZZECCHI 72, 4 LOWES 5 ANTONELLI 44, 6 SASAKI 44, 7 MASIA 39, 8 BINDER 36, 9 SALAC
as Miller, Johann Zarco Yamaha) to misjudge a 66, 5 DI GIANNANTONIO 60, 6 ROBERTS 31, 7 CANET 30, 30, 10 DUPASQUIER 27, 11 GUEVARA 24, 12 YAMANAKA 26,
(Pramac Ducati), Quartararo, move on the Spaniard at the 8 SCHROTTER 30, 9 OGURA 29, 10 VIERGE 26, 13 RODRIGO 25, 14 FOGGIA 20, 15 ALCOBA 18.
11 BENDSNEYDER 24, 12 A FERNANDEZ 23, 13 NAVARRO 19,
and Francesco Bagnaia following turn, taking himself 14 ARBOLINO 18, 15 VIETTI 13.
(Lenovo Ducati) – the down and running Rossi wide
season’s quickest men so far – in the process. *One place penalty for exceeding track limits
made up the final top four. And that was only the start. POS RIDER NAT BIKE TIME RIDER STANDINGS AFTER 1 OF 8 ROUNDS
1 A ZACCONE 41, 2 M CASADEI 33, 3 D AEGERTER 33, 4 E
1 E GRANADO BRA ONE 12m23.012s
It was clear this would be Rain began peppering the 2 M CASADEI ITA SIC58 +0.306s GRANADO 28, 5 J TORRES 27, 6 M FERRARI 18, 7 Y HERNANDEZ
a chaotic contest from the circuit on lap three. By lap 3 A ZACCONE* ITA OCTO +0.253s 16, 8 M HERRERA 13, 9 M PONS 11, 10 H OKUBO 9.

amcn.com.au 97
race
report
1. Alex Rins did this on the out lap from his bike swap 2. Fabio and Jack
looked comfortable while others did not 3. Johann Zarco is making a habit of
charging in the second half of races 4. Our man Miller is girt by Frenchmen…

Round 5 Bugatti Circuit, Le Mans, France, 14-16 May 2021 MotoGP World Championship

four it was a downpour.

From leading, Viñales “was
nowhere” after a mistake at
turn nine. Miller ran off track
at turn 11, dropping him back
to fourth. Mir crashed out at
turn 12 just as the field pitted
for wet rubber at the close
of that lap. And Rins soon
followed, falling at turn four
as he exited from pit lane on
wets just behind the leaders.
By then, Marquez had gained
the initiative, taking advantage
of Quartararo’s napping on
the entrance of pitlane to
lead once the bike swap was
complete. By the end of the
seventh lap he was 1.5s clear,
with Miller a further 3.9s back
in third. Nakagami, Zarco and
Alex Marquez (LCR Honda)
were in another race, 13s in
arrears in a revised top six.
With past form in mind, this
contest was only going one
way. But Marquez was soon
out of the way, his spectacular
dismount on lap eight opening
the door for Quartararo.
“Already in the warm-up
it was quite difficult to get
the temperature in the rear
tyre, especially on entry and
off gas and brakes,” Marquez
“I stopped at
the wrong
bike”
– Quartararo
reflected. “I wasn’t pushing a
lot, but I just crashed.”
From there, Quartararo
found himself in front, and in
control, a fine achievement
considering Yamaha’s
profligacy in such encounters
in previous years. It wasn’t just
that: the 22-year old struggled
at this very race in similar
conditions last October, and he
had gone under the knife just
12 days before to address the
arm-pump issues that slowed
him in Jerez. Yet he was soon
notified he had violated the
rules by parking his bike at the
entrance of Viñales’s garage
during the bike swap.
“I arrived into the pit lane,”
he recalled. “I was looking at
the numbers on the ground.
I was first going to (Enea)
Bastianini’s box. Then I turned
into the correct one, but I
stopped at the wrong bike.”
He was handed a Long Lap
Penalty, which he served on
lap 12. Miller had taken his
own penalty on laps nine
and 10. Yet it caused him the
minimum of fuss. Soon he was
on the tail of the leader, and
eased by his young adversary
at La Chapelle on lap 12. From
there he never looked back.
Even as Zarco later charged
to close down his lead, which
peaked at 7.1s, Miller was
always in control.
“In the last corner I could
see Johann coming. I was able
to manage the gap and just
brought it home.”
His final advantage was
3.9s, some turnaround for a
man being written off just one
month ago.
Despite sitting 11s behind
Quartararo on lap 16, Zarco’s
wet tyre selection of medium
front, medium rear (Miller
was medium, soft, Quartararo
soft, medium) was the right
one for the closing laps,
when most of the track had
dried out. He caught his
countryman on lap 21 and
eased by on the front straight
a lap later on his way to a third
second place in five races.
“My medium rear took four
3 4
laps to get ready. If I think
about the victory, I lost it
there. But I’m pretty happy
with the 20 points.”
Quartararo was delighted
with third, 14s back.
Like Zarco, Bagnaia was
another later charger with
medium-medium tyres
fitted. His fourth place was
impressive considering he
was as low as 19th in the early
stages and completed two
Long Lap penalties for pitlane
speeding during his comeback.
After starting last wet-
weather specialist Danilo
Petrucci (Tech 3 KTM) was
fifth, while Alex Marquez
led an all-Honda trio of
Nakagami and Espargaro
for his best result of the year.
Iker Lecuona (Tech 3 KTM)
enjoyed a second-best result
in ninth, ahead of Viñales.

STEP OFF OF THE WEEKEND PLUMMET OF THE WEEKEND

Pedro Acosta finished a lowly (by his When the rain came on lap four, Maverick
standards) eighth in Moto3 after this Viñales led but in 23 laps he dropped nine
happened. Even his crashes are world-class positions and 41 seconds to Miller

98 amcn.com.au

Granado wins
a thriller
LE MANS HOSTED the best MotoE
race yet. Eight riders fought out
a seven-lap thriller that was
decided on the last corner. In
heavy winds first Alessandro
Zaccone (Octo Pramac) took
control but pole sitter Eric
Granado (One Energy) quickly
recovered from a slow start. He
passed Lukas Tulovic (Tech3
Racing), Jordi Torres (Pons
Racing) and Dominique Aegerter
(IntactGP) in quick succession
to sit second with a lap to play.
A move at La Chapelle didn’t
pay off but Granado went again
at T13, and had the presence
of mind to dive inside when
Zaccone responded at the final
turn. Zaccone’s touching of the
green on the corner exit led to him
receiving a one-place penalty,
demoting him from second to
third. Mattia Casadei (SIC58) was
promoted to second, and seven
riders were covered by a second
at the flag.
Fernandez led a Red
Bull 1-2 in France
Fernandez’s
star rises
THE STAR OF Raul Fernandez
(Ajo Kalex) continues to rise,
after he won in France. The
track had dried out after
torrential morning rain and
riders had to navigate a dry
but patchy track on slick tyres
in the early laps. Fernandez
somehow maintained his cool
in a frenzied opening, which
claimed a number of podium
contenders, including Aron
Canet (Aspar Boscoscuro),
Augusto Fernandez (Marc
VDS Kalex) and Joe Roberts
(Italtrans Kalex) through laps
one to four.
Title challenger Sam Lowes
then skittled himself and Xavi
Vierge (Petronas Kalex) in a
turn-eight collision on lap
four. From lap five, Fernandez
moved past early leader
Marco Bezzecchi (Sky VR46
Landscape Gardner
“THIS ALL CAME from our
qualifying. What are you going
to do?” That was Gardner’s
assessment of a race he had the
speed to win. A mistake on his
fastest lap on Saturday afternoon
in patchy conditions left him
seventh on the grid. And a near
moment at the first chicane
ultimately left him too far in
arrears of teammate Fernandez.
“I don’t think the quali helped,”
said the 23-year old. “And it
seemed I was taking the sensible
Kalex) to take the initiative.
Only teammate Remy
Gardner (Ajo Kalex) could
run his pace, but he was
mired in ninth after a feisty
first chicane. After Lowes
crashed, the Australian made
short work of Tony Arbolino
(IntactGP Kalex) and Bo
Bendsnyder (SAG Kalex)
before passing Bezzecchi for
second on lap 19.
It left Fernandez to win
by 1.4s and become the first
rider in Moto2 history to win
twice in his first five races in
the class. Behind Gardner,
Bezzecchi collected a second
straight podium and there
were personal best results in
the class for Arbolino (fourth)
and Bendsneyder (fifth).
Marcel Schrotter (IntactGP
Kalex) was sixth.
Moto2 2nd
approach in the
first few laps. I got
buried going into the
first chicane. Vierge came around
the outside, (Hector) Garzo up
the inside and they both lost the
front. Everyone was slapping into
each other. I nearly went down.
But then I started understanding
the track, changing my lines.
There were a few crashes in
front that freed up some space.
Unfortunately, I ran out of tyre in
the end, coming from so far back.”
Garcia’s Mama
reckons That’s
All Right
Garcia
keeps his
cool
AFTER FOUR EPIC last-lap fights,
Moto3 offered up a rare subdued
contest to start the day. Heavy
morning rain left the track
soaking ahead of the start. An
unusual top three of Filip Salac
(Snipers Honda), Riccardo Rossi
(BOE KTM) and Sergio Garcia
(Aspar GasGas) led the way on
lap one after early leader Niccolo
Antonelli (Avintia KTM) crashed
out at turn 12.
Eyes were on championship
leader Pedro Acosta (Ajo KTM),
making his debut at this track
and in these conditions. The
Spaniard lit up the contest early
on, rising from 21st to sixth by lap
two. But even the sport’s new star
was susceptible to turn three’s
treachery. He slid off on lap three,
remounted in 27th and fought
back to eighth.
Not that it mattered a great
deal for his title hopes. Main
challengers Jaume Masia
(Ajo KTM) and Darryn Binder
(Petronas) joined Antonelli in the
gravel with crashes on laps two
and nine.
Up front, Garcia and Salac broke
clear to play out a cat-and-mouse
chase. The Spaniard’s mistake
on lap 13 allowed the Czech by.
But Salac’s time at the front was
fleeting. Garcia retook the lead a
lap later and gradually increased
his margin to 2.3s by the flag.
Rossi was third, holding off a late
John McPhee (Petronas Sprinta
Honda) charge for a maiden
podium. Ayumu Sasaki was fifth,
with rookie Adrian Fernandez
(Max Racing Husqvarna) sixth.
amcn.com.au 99
race report
YOUR FORTNIGHTLY FIX
Round 1 MotorLand Aragón, Spain, 21-23 May 2021 WorldSBK Championship
Ton up club
History was made at the opening
round of the 2021 WorldSBK
championship when Jonathan
Rea cracked the 100
REPORT GORDON RITCHIE
WORLDSBK RACING HAS
never started so late in the
year as it has in 2021, but it
has very much started with
history made even on day
one when Jonathan Rea
scored his 100th career win,
and his 85th since joining
Kawasaki for the 2015
season. Not a surprise given
that he has been champion
for six years running.
In race one, the only rider
who could stay even close
to his orbit was a certain
Alex Lowes, his own KRT
teammate, on a new bike
which is new enough for a
fresh homologation but not
thought by the FIM to be a
whole new engine. So as you
were for the peak power,
same as 2020.
At a track like Aragon it
should have made a real
difference with faster top
speeds all around the green
bikes, but Rea was in a class
of his own again on Saturday
for a full-distance 18-lap
race one.
He had been more steady
away on Friday but come
Superpole before race one on
Saturday he set a new record
of 1m48.458s, to record his
28th career pole position.
ROOKIE RIDER OF THE WEEKEND
With nine rookies in the WorldSBK
class for 2021 there were many
potential winners but clearly Andrea
Locatelli (Pata Yamaha) is deserving
of this award with ninth place overall
on his first round scorecard
100 amcn.com.au
PHOTOGRAPHY GOLD&GOOSE
The main event for Rea,
made sweeter by the fact he
did not get the same higher
spec engine to race with he
had been testing through 1
the winter, was taking his
100th career win in the 2
opener, by four seconds,
from his battling teammate
Alex Lowes.
“We’ve been away from
home so long this off-season,
sometimes for no laps. But
we’re in a good position
now,” Rea said on Saturday.
“To win the first race
starts our championship off
25 points better than last
year, because last year was a
disaster in race one.”
The KRT duo both escaped
their many pursuers in a
“We’re in
field of 23 riders, from lap original ‘Sunday morning’
one on. Lowes came from racer is Razgatlioglu, but this
a good
fourth to second very quickly being WorldSBK the first real
then shadowed his teammate race is Saturday.
position
until his front-end started Lowes was losing a second
to slip and slide and he had a lap to his pursuers at one
now. Last
to back off to take what he stage but he rallied to keep
hoped would be second. enough left-side rear tyre
It would be but not until
he had taken part in a fight
grip to pass his sparing
partner Razgatlioglu on the year was a
with Pata Yamaha’s Toprak
Razgatlioglu, bursting
exit of the final corner. He
was ahead of the third place disaster in
with talent and speed that
is missing from his usual
Toprak but just 0.043 seconds
after 18 tense laps. If Lowes race one”
qualifying ordinariness. The has any hangover from
–Rea
DEJA-OUCH OF THE WEEKEND
A painful deja-vu moment for GMT94 rider
Jules Cluzel in the opening Motorland
Supersport race saw him rudely taken
out by an errant MV Agusta rider – for
the second time in two seasons. Last year
Raffaele De Rosa, this year Niki Tuuli
 WorldSBK Round 1 Finishing Positions
1. Jonathan Rea made it a century of wins in Race 1 2. Scott Redding 2020 Winners
WSBK R1 S Redding
risked slicks and dominated the final race 3. Toprak Razgatlioglu, Alex 33m23.739s 10

Lowes and Chaz Davies fight it out 4. Tom Sykes fights off Leon Haslam WSBK R2 J Rea
9
5
8
5. Lowes and Razgatlioglu pay homage to the century man 33m18.756s 4
WSS R1 A Locatelli 11
7
6

28m49.314s 1
WSS R2 A Locatelli 13
3
2
28m42.501s 12
14

15

WSBK Race 1 17

POS RIDER NAT BIKE TIME

1 J REA GBR KAW 33m24.225s
16
2 A LOWES GBR KAW +3.965s
3 T RAZGATLIOGLU TUR YAM +4.008s
4 S REDDING GBR DUC +4.242s
5 C DAVIES GBR DUC +4.615s
MotorLand Aragón,
6 T SYKES GBR BMW +6.784s Alcañiz, Spain 5.345km
7 M RINALDI ITA DUC +8.345s
8 L HASLAM GBR HON +10.817s
3 9 G GERLOFF USA YAM +10.326s WSS Race 1
10 A LOCATELLI ITA YAM +17.692s POS RIDER NAT BIKE TIME
11 M VAN DER MARK NED BMW +21.154s 1 S ODENDAAL RSA YAM 28m53.622s
12 A BASSANI ITA DUC +27.253s 2 D AEGERTER SWI TAM +0.099s
13 I VIÑALES SPA KAW +30.963s 3 P OETTL GER KAW +2.536s
14 K NOZANE JPN YAM +36.769s 4 L BERNARDI RSM YAM +3.956s
15 L MAHIAS FRA KAW +39.334s 5 M GONZALEZ ESP KAW +4.738s
16 J FOLGER GER BMW +41.544s 6 F CARICASULO ITA YAM +4.817s
17 C PONSSON BEL KAW +43.179s 7 H SOOMER EST YAM +6.121s

→ 18 L CRESSON BEL KAW +1m21.460s

DNF A BAUTISTA (SPA, HON), E LAVERTY (IRL, BMW),
8
9
C BERGMAN
R DE ROSA
SWE
ITA
YAM
KAW
+7.212s
+8.352s
S CALALIERI (ITA, KAW), L MERCADO (ARG, HON), T 10 C ÖNCÜ TUR KAW +16.135s
RABAT (SPA, DUC). 11 R KRUMMENACHER SUI GER +16.279s
POLE POSITION (NEW RECORD) 12 M HERRERA ESP YAM +22.257s
J REA 1m48.458s (REA 1m48.620s, 2020) 13 K MANFREDI ITA YAM +22.296s
FASTEST LAP 14 M FABRIZIO ITA KAW +34.274s
4 J REA 1 50 040 15 G HENDRA PRATAMA INA YAM +37.978s
16 S FROSSARD SUI YAM +39.308s
17 P SZKOPEK POL YAM +59.882s
5 WSBK Superpole race 18 S KAWASAKI JPN KAW +1m04.435s
POS RIDER NAT BIKE TIME 19 L TACCHINI ITA KAW +4 LAPS
1 J REA GBR KAW 19m47.979s
DNF J CLUZEL (FRA, YAM), N TUULI (FIN, MVA), F FULIGNI
2 A LOWES GBR KAW +3.506s
(ITA, YAM), M ALCOBA (ESP, YAM), D PIZZOLI (ITA, YAM),
3 G GERLOFF USA YAM +5.051s T GRADINGER (AUT, YAM), L MONTELLA (ITA, YAM), V TAKALA
4 C DAVIES GBR DUC +8.908s (FIN, YAM).
5 M VAN DER MARK NED YAM +10.175s
POLE POSITION (NEW RECORD)
6 T RAZGATLIOGLU TUR YAM +29.342s
J CLUZEL 1m52.937s (A LOCATELLI 1m53.205s, 2020)
7 A BAUTISTA SPA HON +29.565s
FASTEST LAP (NEW RECORD)
8 S REDDING GBR DUC +33.361s
N TUULI 1m54.187s (A LOCATELLI 1m54.191s, 2020)
9 K NOZANE JPN YAM +33.675s
FASTEST LAP
VAN DER MARK 1m56.261s WSS Race 2
POS RIDER NAT BIKE TIME

WSBK Race 2 1 S ODENDAAL RSA YAM 31m32.392s

POS RIDER NAT BIKE TIME
2 R DE ROSA ITA KAW +0.100s
1 S REDDING GBR DUC 34m19.394s 3 J CLUZEL FRA YAM +0.334s
2 J REA GBR KAW +9.856s 4 H SOOMER EST YAM +0.389s
3 A LOWES GBR KAW +10.434s 5 D AEGERTER SWI YAM +17.785s
4 T SYKES GBR BMW +12.094s 6 C BERGMAN SWE YAM +19.976s
5 M VAN DER MARK NED BMW +16.234s 7 M ALCOBA SPA YAM +31.984s
6 T RAZGATLIOGLU TUR YAM +20.191s 8 V TAKALA FIN YAM +35.144s
his winter training crash Bautista crashing in race one 7 G GERLOFF USA YAM +20.427s 9 R KRUMMENACHER GER YAM +36.403s
10 G HENDRA PRATAMA INA YAM +37.524s
shoulder injury and then and Leon Haslam finishing 8 J FOLGER GER BMW +20.587s
11 M GONZALEZ ESP KAW +37.821s
9 A LOCATELLI ITA YAM +25.026s
recovery, it was not apparent eighth, over 10 seconds 10 L MAHIAS FRA KAW +28.855s 12 K MANFREDI ITA YAM +50.606s
in race one. back at a circuit with a long 11 A BAUTISTA SPA HON +25.644s 13 M HERRERA ESP YAM +56.884s
14 C ÖNCÜ TUR KAW +1m04.895s
Just off podium was Scott back straight. 12 K NOZANE JPN YAM +38.275s
15 P SZKOPEK POL YAM +1m12.634s
13 I VIÑALES SPA KAW +41.585s
Redding, (Aruba Racing After the heat of Friday, 14 A BASSANI ITA DUC +44.922s 16 S FROSSARD SWI YAM +1m17.314s
17 F FULIGNI ITA YAM +1m17.560s
Ducati), and his weekend the cool of Saturday, the 15 C PONSSON FRA APR +46.022s
16 M RINALDI ITA DUC +1m08.072s 18 F CARICASULO ITA YAM +1m33.617s
would get worse and then rains came on Sunday. This 17 E LAVERTY IRL BMW +1m13.998s 19 L TACCINI ITA KAW +1m33.621s
drastically better. Chaz made the 10-lap Superpole 18 L MERCADO ARG HON +1m14.859s 20 S KAWASAKI JPN KAW +1m53.310s
21 M FABRIZIO ITA KAW +1 LAP
Davies (Team Go Eleven race so tricky for tyre choice 19 C DAVIES GBR DUC +1 LAP
20 L CRESSON BEL KAW +2 LAPS DNF L MONTELLA (ITA, YAM), D PIZZOLI (ITA, YAM), L
Ducati) was one of those that some people even broke 19 S CAVALIERI ITA KAW +3 LAPS BERNARDI (RSM, YAM), P OETTL (GER, KAW)
few riders going for the SCX the fourth wall of WorldSBK DNF T RABAT (SPA, DUC), L HASLAM (GBR, HON). FASTEST LAP (RECORD)
ultra-soft – usually 10-lap racing and used Pirelli’s FASTEST LAP DE ROSA 2m08.310s
C DAVIES 1m52.717s
– rear. He was fifth, a great intermediates. Few tyre RIDER STANDINGS AFTER 1 OF 13 ROUNDS
RIDER STANDINGS AFTER 1 OF 12 ROUNDS
1 ODENDAAL 50, 2 AEGERTER 31, 3 DE ROSA 27, 4 SOOMER
start to his ‘privateer’ status manufacturers even bother 1 REA 57, 2 LOWES 45, 3 REDDING 40, 4 RAZGATLIOGLU 22, 5 BERGMAN 18, 6 CLUZEL 16, 7 OETTL 16, 8 GONZALEZ
in WorldSBK. Second top now, but most riders were 30, 5 SYKES 23, 6 GERLOFF 23, 7 VAN DER MARK 21, 8 16, 9 BERNARDI 13, 10 KRUMMENACHER 12,
DAVIES 17, 9 LOCATELLI 13, 10 RINALDI 9, 11 FOLGER 8, 11 CARICASULO 10, 12 ALCOBA 9, 13 TAKALA 8, 14 C ONCU
Ducati rider, beating Michael more than happy with that 12 HASLAM 8, 13 BAUTISTA 8, 14 MAHIAS 7, 15 NOZANE 7. 8, 15 F PRATAMA 7.
Ruben Rinaldi (Aruba choice, including first-time
Ducati) who was seventh, intermediate man and Sprint WorldSSP 300 Championship, Races 1 & 2
behind the top new BMW race winner, Rea. POS RIDER NAT BIKE TIME POS RIDER NAT BIKE TIME
M 1000 RR rider, Tom Sykes. It was two from two. 1 A HUERTAS SPA KAW 19m48.460s 1 T BOOTH-AMOS GBR KAW 25m38.455s
2 T BOOTH-AMOS GBR KAW +0.004s 2 U ORRADRE SPA YAM +0.127s
A promising weekend for In a few senses, as Lowes 3 Y OKAYA JPN KAW +0.094s 3 A HUERTAS SPA KAW +0.140s
HRC went relatively nowhere battled his way to second
RIDER STANDINGS AFTER 1 OF 8 ROUNDS
in the races, with Alvaro again this time well ahead 1 BOOTH-AMOS 45, 2 HUERTAS 41, 3 ORRADRE 33, 4 OKAYA 29, 5 DI SORA 19, 12 H KHOURI 7.

amcn.com.au 101
race
report
1. Garrett Gerloff crashed while trying to take the R2 lead 2. The American ran Rea off the
track, and later apologised 3. Michael van der Mark’s BMW debut was a promising one
4. Redding ran away in R2 5. That new Kawasaki is going to take a power of beating…

Round 1 MotorLand Aragón, Spain, 21-23 May 2021 WorldSBK Championship

of third-place rider Garrett

Gerloff (GRT Yamaha) on his
factory-backed bike in an
independent team.
Davies was off podium
again in fourth, but a
2
recovering Michael van
der Mark was a strong fifth
after a tough first race on
Friday, taking a confidence-
boosting fifth on the new
M 1000 RR BMW.
On full wets, Redding was
only eighth, a near disaster
for his championship even
at this stage. He chose wets
when intermediates would 1 3
have worked better, as they
did for a few others.
For the so-called race two, 4 5
the last race of the weekend,
and the second full points
one, Redding’s tyre-choosing
approach from the first
two races meant he opted
for slicks. It seemed mad
to some but there he went,
out in front after a steady
few laps, to record a clear
win by almost 10 seconds.
From Rea, naturally, as
Redding hinted in his post-
race comments, Rea always
finishes second even if he
can’t actually win.
On his intermediate tyre
choice, he was not going
“An up-and- promotes Rea to legend
status even more. And his
to celebrate his 102nd, as
down legend is alive, well and

weekend
Redding was using his slicks clearly hungry for more.
well on a drying track to Behind the podium

disappear. He needed a big
win and took it bravely.
“It was not plain sailing,”
said Reddding. “It was an
up-and-down weekend for
us. I hope going on to Estoril
that we can smooth that out
a little bit, find our footing
and make good progress.”
The most amazing thing in
the Rea-Redding final race
dynamic was that Rea was
actually off track for a time,
as Gerloff looked up the
inside and said he got caught
out, but in any case he went
into the downhill chicane,
and took Rea off track. Off
track, not off bike, as Rea got
going again and moved back
for us”
– Redding
up to second place, for 20
points to Redding’s 25.
The battle for third place
was epic at times, but Alex
Lowes was to take three
podiums in three starts,
a great turnaround after
hurting his shoulder in a
winter training accident. His
confidence was clear, but
still he and all find it almost
impossible to overcome Rea
in a like-for-like fight.
Scoring over 100 race wins,
the vast bulk on Kawasakis,
places BMW’s day was
getting better. Sykes came
through to fourth from 10th
on the grid, a remarkable
recovery and he even beat
his resurgent new teammate,
van der Mark into fifth
place. The BMW project,
complete with big wings and
the ‘M’ designation usually
reserved for their fastest
road cars, was not looking
that positive in the winter,
but for races the bike clearly
has potential yet to come
from its faster engine.
The combative
Razgatlioglu had to settle
for sixth, overcoming the
upstart Yamaha Independent
Gerloff. Eighth for Jonas
Folger (Bonovo MGM BMW)
was a good ride for a rookie,
even if he did do some races
last year on a Yamaha.
In the championship, that
final race win for Redding
keeps him close enough
for a strong Estoril round
next weekend to not let Rea
get too far away, as he can
do given his metronomic
approach to going f lat out

102 amcn.com.au

to the podiums almost all of
the time.
The top points scorers
are Rea on 57, Lowes on 45,
Redding on 40, Razgatlioglu
30 and Sykes 23. Four
manufacturers share the
top five places, with only
Honda trailing the pack with
Haslam in overall 12th place.
That’s surprising given their
winter testing pace.
Evan Bros Yamaha has
screwed in a new lightbulb
and kept winning
New Scamps For Old
IT WAS A DRAMA and over-
drama in the first WorldSSP
race of the weekend, as Steven
Odendaal’s first race win in
this class was his first podium
in WorldSSP ever. He took the
seemingly all-conquering
Evan Bros Yamaha R6 to a race
win just like many others have
done before him recently. He
only won by 0.099sec, from
old Dutch WorldSSP masters
Ten Kate and their Swiss rider
Dominique Aergeter, again on
a Yamaha YZF-R6.
Third was now lead
Kawasaki Puccetti rider
Philipp Öttl, earning his team
their 100th podium finish
since they moved to all classes
of racing inside the global
paddock. In race two held in
the wet, tyres were again all, as
those on full wets eventually
had to give way to those on
drier choices.
WorldSSP 9th/28th
Khouri Mail
HAVING QUALIFIED 15TH in
Superpole in the morning
Harry Khouri (Fusport-RT
Motorsports by SKM Kawasaki)
spent some of the opening race
behind 2018 World Champion
Ana Carrasco. Harry had a strong
first foray into the global scene,
finishing in ninth place after the
red-flag incident that ended the
race six laps early. Khouri was
only 1.395sec from race winner
Adrian Huertas. In race two an
early crash and restart saw him
down in 28th place, and 12th in
the championship overall.
“It was a positive start to the
Odendaal won again, by
just 0.1sec from the seemingly
unlikely Orelac racing
VerdNatura Kawasaki rider
for the first time, Rafaelle
De Rosa. His wet front and
intermediate rear may have
been the best compromise,
because his closing speed on
the top riders was awesome
to watch. He led until the
marginally faster Yamaha of
Odendaal passed him into the
final curve.
Behind the top two Jules
Cluzel, who had to start
from the back row of the grid
because his rear tyre was
down on pressure, came
through for third – another
amazing feat of arms. Hannes
Soomer (Kallio racing
Yamaha) was fourth, and just
0.389 seconds from the win.
In the points it’s Odendaal
50, Aegerter 31 and De Rosa 27.
day coming away
with 15th position in
qualifying,” said the
rookie Khouri.
“I got off to a pretty good start
and didn’t lose any positions
in the first few corners. I was
getting a little too excited and
started to make some mistakes
and then lost a couple of
positions.
“After a few more laps I
started to find my rhythm and
managed to tag on to the back
of the leading group. After a
tough race it was great to come
away with P9 in my first race.”
The SSP300 points
leader is, er, TBA
Little goes
large
THE FIRST RACE of the 2021
season in WorldSBK… was
in WorldSSP300 at 12.45 on
Saturday. The crazy gang
of rebellious youths that
constitutes the WorldSSP300
class did not disappoint
again, with Adrian Huertas
(MTM Motoport Kawasaki)
winning the first race, from
Tom Booth-Amos (Fusport-RT
Motorsports by SKM Kawasaki)
and Yuta Okaya (MTM Motoport
Kawasaki). Three Kawasakis
on top but the fight was open
between the Ninjas
and the R3
Yamahas,
with two blue
bikes in the
top seven,
which was
separated
by just 0.624
seconds. The
race went to
nine laps only, as a
red-f lag incident in the second
group halted the race with six
full laps to go. Full points were
awarded.
In race two the new usual
suspects went at it with gusto
and the final top 10 were
covered by 0.795 seconds
only. Unai Orradre (MS Racing
Yamaha) crossed the line first
but was penalised for venturing
onto the green track limits strip,
and dropped to second behind
new race winner, Booth-Amos.
Third was Huertas, riding
on home ground, and fourth
Okaya. Ana Carrasco was fifth.
In the points, Booth-Amos leads
on 45, Huertas has 41, and
Orradre 33. No Estoril for the
300s, next round Misano.
amcn.com.au 103
sport
MotoGP
Dall’Igna
feared
for Jack’s
future
DUCATI CORSE BOSS Gigi
Dall’Igna admits he feared
for the future of Jack Miller
before he stared down
physical and performance
issues to secure his
immediate future at Ducati.
The turning point was
Miller’s consummate
Spanish GP win at Jerez,
which turned the tide after
confidence-denting results
in both the races in Qatar
and a crash in Portugal.
No one was happier than
an emotional Dall’Igna with
Miller’s resurgence, with a
back-to-back win in Le Mans
easily activating Ducati’s
option on Miller for 2022.
“In those weeks I thought a
lot about Jack,” Dall’Igna told
AMCN. “He had collected less
points than he could have
and when that happens to a
rider, it is an easy moment
to enter a negative spiral
that brings him down. I was
afraid, but he reacted well.
“I have never had any
doubts about his talent.
Victory or podium made little
104 amcn.com.au
Ducati boss admits Miller’s future
in the factory squad looked shaky
difference, but Jack needed a
race like Jerez.”
While Miller’s early-season
results were overshadowed
by fast and smooth Italian
teammate Pecco Bagnaia,
importantly it did not
unbalance the competitive
but friendly team dynamic.
“It is important that the
riders get along, but up to
a certain point,” Dall’Igna
said. “We have already made
mistakes in the past to make
choices based on friendship.
“The important thing is
that they are professionals
and collaborate. And that
they respect each other. But
friendship is of little interest
to us.”
The Ducati youth policy is
entrenched with Miller and
Bagnaia for the factory squad
with emerging aces Jorge
Martin and Enea Bastianini
in the pipeline reinforcing
Dall’Igna’s talent spotting.
“Pecco is here because he
has done beautiful things in
his career, some even a little
hidden. Beyond the Moto2
World Championship his
years in Mahindra (Moto3)
Miller has climbed
out of a hole and
impressed Dall’Igna
were almost more important
to me, where with a difficult
bike he was the only rider to
find a way to make it go fast.”
While backing Miller and
Bagnaia as title contenders,
Dall’Igna says the field is
wider than the favouritism
bestowed on Yamaha’s
Fabio Quartararo. And even
the impact the return of
eight-time world champion
and Honda’s main man
Marc Marquez can have
as his fitness and race
mentality builds after long
injury lay-off.
“It is still early, many
riders can demonstrate
more than they have done
so far,” he said.
“From what I have seen
and without having spoken
to him, it seems to me that
having been out for a year and
getting hurt in an important
way has left its mark.
“But it’s Marquez, talent
is not in question and with
that head he will come back
strong.”
COLIN YOUNG
 MotoGP
VR46 TO
GO WITH
DUCATI
IN 2022?
IN FRANCE, FERVENT speculation
surrounded the future of
Valentino Rossi’s VR46 team,
which has a place on the 2022
MotoGP grid.
It was believed Yamaha made
a late play to secure the outfi t
as its satellite team, with Italian
media reporting the Japanese
factory off ered to lease its bikes
for half the price that it quoted to
Petronas SRT.
Rossi, whose team secured
controversial backing from
Aramco, the offi cial oil company
of Saudi Arabia, confi rmed
talks were ongoing through the
weekend.
“We are talking to both Ducati
and Yamaha, and the chances
of going with either at 50/50,”
he said.
“There are positive and
negatives to both options.”
But it appears the team
will ultimately go with Ducati
machinery next year, leaving
MotoGP
The Doctor is
keeping a close
eye on Ducati
Petronas to stick with Yamaha
for a further season. Franco
Morbidelli has an agreement to
remain in that structure, and
said his future depended on the
team’s path forward.
“I like Yamaha,” said the Italian,
who is currently racing two-year
old machinery. “I would like to
keep my relationship with them.
“If I will be supported with
an updated machine, my
love for Yamaha will be even
bigger. Nothing is clear yet
because we have to wait a little
bit, some more time for some
confi rmations.”
It is believed Morbidelli will
receive full-factory backing from
next season.
Suzuki has indicated that it
will not supply machinery to any
satellite squad in 2022, meaning
the Gresini team will choose
between Ducati and Aprilia
machinery for next season.
NEIL MORRISON
DOVI’S
LATEST TEST
RAINED OUT
AFTER AN INAUSPICIOUS testing
debut aboard Aprilia’s RS-GP at
Jerez in April, much was riding
on Andrea Dovizioso’s second
outing for the Italian factory
at Mugello. But the weather
dampened any hopes for both
SHOOTS OF RECOVERY FOR ROSSI
ELEVENTH PLACE MAY not seem like much to shout about but Le Mans
was comfortably Valentino Rossi’s best weekend of 2021 and showed
some shoots of recovery to the 42-year old, who is undergoing the
worst spell of his career. The official one-day test that followed the
Spanish Grand Prix offered Rossi the chance to try a host of new items.
“We modified the setting of the suspension, we have different forks,
we changed the weight balance of bike,” he said on Friday in France.
“We tried also a different carbon swingarm which is good. All these
things helped us, especially in braking and in entry. It can bring more
speed in the corner without running wide and I feel better on the bike.”
Rossi was strong in wet conditions (he placed seventh in a wet
warm-up) and had respectable pace in the dry, a big improvement
from his desperate Jerez race, where he lagged behind in 16th.
the 35-year old and Aprilia as rain moment there are no advantage
afflicted the two-day test held from his tests.”
over 11-12 May. Dovizioso was once again
Full-time rider Aleix Espargaro grilled on his future. But the
appeared mildly frustrated this 15-time MotoGP race winner was
recent outing failed to lead to unwilling to give much away.
Dovizioso getting any more “I don’t think it’s important
comfortable aboard the machine, to speak about racing this year
which hasn’t fi nished more than because it wasn’t in the plan.
eight seconds behind a race And I couldn’t still push with this
winner in 2021. bike. So in my opinion there is no
“The two tests he did for us reason, in this moment, to think
were both useless,” he said. about racing. And we will see,
“In the wet it’s difficult to maybe I will have a chance to do
understand something. In Jerez some other tests but we have to
test he was not very fast due speak about that. I’m living my
to conditions of the wind. And life in this moment, day by day,
it was just his first test. At the because I don’t have any stress.”
amcn.com.au 105
sport
MotoGP
Marquez still recovering
Eight-time world champ reveals there’s a long way to go
MARC MARQUEZ WAS able to
showcase his blinding speed
in Sunday’s wet-weather race.
But the eight-time champion
is still suffering from a lack of
upper-body strength, and felt
particularly disadvantaged
at Le Mans as he recovers
strength from the career
threatening arm break he
suffered last July.
“When I speak about
muscles, I mean all the arm is
close to 80 per cent. But some
Le Mans was a
mixed bag for
Marquez
MotoGP
LE MANS SCHEDULE
UNDER FIRE
MUCH LIKE AT Phillip Island
after mother nature plays havoc
with the Australian GP weather,
speculation is mounting that
riders will request a calendar
change for the French Grand Prix
after almost 120 crashes were
recorded over the three days of
the event.
The cold mornings,
regular rain showers and tyre
allocations that aren’t designed
for temperatures this low all
contribute to this being one of
the less popular rounds on the
calendar. For the second year
106 amcn.com.au
are 50 per cent. It depends on
the movement,” he said.
“I’m struggling more,
especially the back of the
shoulder. If you remember,
two winters ago I had an
operation on the right
shoulder. That injury still is
not 100 per cent recovered
because there was some
damage to a nerve in the
shoulder.”
That means Marquez is
still struggling in long right
in succession the
number of crashes
at the French venue
soared, with 117
coming across the
three days – the
third highest in recent
history.
Coming off 2020, when
100 crashes occurred (36 more
than the circuit with the second
highest number), some riders
were questioning why the series
continues to visit northern
France in the middle of Spring.
Aleix Espargaro was one of them.
corners, “like corner one,
corner five, corner eight…
But then in the left corners
I’m feeling really good,
normal.”
Yet that creates its own
problems: “It’s where I want
to gain time and I push too
much. If you check, two
times in Jerez, one time here,
I crashed in a left corner,
because it’s where I feel the
most confident and I try to
take all the lap time there.”
Aleix was an
unhappy man
at Le Mans
“We can’t come to
Le Mans with 8ºC on the
tarmac, because the tyres that
Michelin and Dunlop are bringing
are not working,” the Spaniard,
inset, said.
“I don’t know if someone sees it
as funny that we crash, why don’t
we change the race to a normal
Marquez had a check-up
after Jerez and was cleared
to increase his weight
training.
“There I feel like still it’s a
big difference between the
left and right arm and we are
far from a good level.”
An anti-clockwise track
would ease Marquez’s
physical burden. The
Sachsenring is just that, and
the German MotoGP is the set
for 20 June. NM
situation? It’s very diffi cult to
predict what is going to happen.
And the MotoGP allocation of the
front, we have one tyre, which
normally I don’t even put on the
wheels, it’s super soft and we
are even like this crashing. And
Michelin have no other option
which is softer.” NM
 WorldSBK
GREEN WITH RPM ENVY
AN INTERPRETATION OF the
WorldSBK rules has left Kawasaki
on the back foot after the FIM
said the fi rm’s new engine isn’t
new enough to warrant a rise
in allowable rpm, while the
similarly updated BMW is.
AMCN understands the
main cause for concern inside
the Kawasaki camp is that the
factory KRT team have been
testing with an engine that revs
500rpm or so more than the
previous one.
The BMW M 1000 RR also has
internal changes and, crucially,
is allowed to have a new higher
rev limit partly because it has
Kawasaki had to
homologate a ‘new’
motor for 2021
WorldSBK
REA HITS 100 WINS
THE INEVITABILITY OF Jonathan Rea
taking 100 career wins this season was
possibly the reason why his celebrations,
though heartfelt, felt slightly muted.
Maybe it was the dragging weirdness
of having no crowd on board to make
an atmosphere? But Dorna pulled out
some pretty big guns from afar, with
Lewis Hamilton, Giacomo Agostini, Carl
Fogarty, Wayne Rainey, Marc Marquez,
plus many other sports fi gures, creating a
video extolling Rea’s 100 win virtues in a
distanced virtual manner. GR
a higher peak power fi gure as
stock. Because of this BMW
has made use of its permitted
concession parts to complete a
signifi cant tuning package.
However, the FIM technical
stewards deemed what more
or less amounts to a new piston
design for the 2021 Ninja is
simply not enough to call it
a new engine, and therefore
has not allowed a rev rise
limit for 2021. It’s worth noting
the engine was deemed new
enough, however, to have to
undergo a new homologation.
The complex way of
balancing WorldSBK
performance includes not just
maximum revs, which can
be varied by calculation of
performance via Dorna/FIM
technical analysis, but also
relies on if you are allowed a
concession upgrade or not.
Given the factory KRT riders
went 1-2 in the championship
the first time out suggests the
stewards made the right call.
But the main issue may possibly
lie with the privateers, who were
looking forward to more revs to
keep them in the hunt against
bikes which are almost always
faster in the speed traps.
GORDON RITCHIE
Rea knocked up his
ton from 305 starts
WorldSBK
DAVIES
UPBEAT
CHAZ DAVIES (GOELEVEN Ducati)
has said the relaxed atmosphere
and improved communication
of an independent squad is
the key to his strong results in
Aragon. Davies has had a change
of pitbox scene in 2021, but is
riding the same bike as last year,
despite the team’s ‘independent
team’ status.
The Brit has attributed much of
his early success to his new crew
chief Pete Jennings.
“I feel like I have a very tight
group around me, and our bike is
our bike,” said Davies.
“I feel like these people are all
kind of listening and working
really well together to get
the most out of this package.
Obviously that’s the goal all the
time, but sometimes it seems like
there’s other influences.
“When you’re in a bigger
situation there’s other influences,
there’s diff erent pressures as
well, but it’s more the attitude
of the group for me. My working
relationship with my crew chief
seems very, very good. I think
it’s probably helped that it’s
the English (native speaking)
connection. For me, I never
placed a value on this before
because I never worked really
with an English [speaking] crew
chief. Those details matter.” GR
amcn.com.au 107
sport
Cross country
Raymond’s solo feat
KATE RAYMOND HAS
completed a solo double-
crossing of the Simpson
Desert. On 16 May Raymond,
34, rode her stock Suzuki
DR-Z400 back to Kulgera on
the Stuart Highway in the
Northern Territory to mark
the feat, completing all but
a short distance of the ride
completely solo.
It was not her first Simpson
Desert crossing, but she rode
from west to east this time,
and entirely by herself. A
luggage rack failure and rear
shock problems slowed her
progress on day one, however
Kate remained undeterred.
After all, this was not a record
attempt, but the fulfilment
of her dream to conquer the
Speedway
AUSSIE SPEEDWAY IS GO
AUSTRALIAN SPEEDWAY FANS
will still get to see 2021 Australian
Solo Championship meetings
that were not staged when
originally scheduled for earlier
this year.
While the Australian Sidecar
Championship did go ahead as
planned in April, all of the two-
The Solos are
coming back in
spring and summer!
108 amcn.com.au
Kate Raymond prepares her stock
DR-Z400 in Darwin before the
1750km trip to her starting point
Australian desert on her own.
Spending a night alone in the
desert was all part of the plan,
however fireside repairs kept
wheel title meetings were called
off in January due to restrictions
and on-going uncertainty
surrounding Covid-19.
The Senior Solo Championship
will not be decided over the
five-round series, but instead a
one-off meeting at Oakburn Park,
Tamworth, on 4 December after a
Max Sullivan
the serenity to a minimum.
With no set schedule and
adequate fuel and water
supplies strapped to her bike,
Qualifying Meeting the previous
night at the same venue.
The other championships
will be staged at their originally
allocated venues – the Under
21 and the Under 16 250cc
Championship will be held at
the Gillman Speedway on 27
November and the Under 16
Kate set out the second day
to tackle more sand dunes. A
second night was spent under
the stars just about 30km
short of Poepell corner, before
completing the first half of
her ride into Birdsville in
Queensland.
Kate then met up with a
group of friends, and the all-
woman crew rode 170km back
to Poepell corner where they
parted ways. While the group
headed north, Kate headed
back west toward Dalhousie,
Finke and then onto Kulgera.
One more solitary night in
the desert, then the final leg to
complete what was a 1500km
round trip that included over
2000 sand dunes.
MAX SULLIVAN
125cc Individual and Teams
Championship will be held
at Sidewinders track, also in
Adelaide on 23-25 September.
Dates and venues for 2022
championships, including what
will be a fi ve-round senior solo
title chase, will be released in
coming weeks. PETER BAKER
 Enduro
Matthew Davis
collected the
Kamfari trophy
KAMFARI TURNS 50!
THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY C&R
Constructions Kamfari enduro
will go down as one of the
toughest. Higher-than-average
rainfall during the wet season,
combined with an already tough
course set out by the Darwin
Motorcycle Club, claimed more
riders and machines than any
race in recent years.
The four-hour race started
well for Nathan Evans, who
grabbed the holeshot from the
dead-engine start and into the
Aussie OS
AUSSIES WIN IN
RAINED-OUT EVENTS
SPEEDWAY IN THE UK has
welcomed back crowds as
their 2021 season finally got
underway on 17 May, when
Government guidelines allowed
limited crowd access, provided
codes of conduct laid down by
the local council for each track
were followed.
You have to feel for fans at
Wolverhampton, though. After
more than 500 days since they
last witnessed a meeting, their
opening night was washed out
first corner. Showing great form,
Evans pulled away from Daniel
McInnes and Darren Clement
and completed the 12km lap in
just over 16 minutes.
From there, things only got
tougher; 2019’s winner Ayden
Bridgeford drowned his new
Husky and was out of contention
while Daniel McInnes also
succumbed to the water on his
second lap.
Chris Warwick was looking for
his third Kamfari victory, but bike
after just two races – the only
good news that Aussie riders
Sam Masters and Nick Morris
won those two events.
Bad weather has caused
a number of meetings to be
rescheduled in the first week,
but already in that week
Jake Allen, Troy Batchelor,
Jason Crump, Jye Etheridge,
Cameron Heeps, Jack Holder,
Brady Kurtz and Justin
Sedgmen have completed at
least one meeting. PB
Max Sullivan
MILESTONES!
There’s a full feature
on Kamfari’s 50th
Anniversary coming
up in our 70th
Anniversary
issue!
troubles slowed his progress.
By the two-hour mark,
Evans was pulling away with a
30-minute lead over Matthew
Davis on his YZ and was looking
like taking a comfortable
win until his KTM suffered a
mechanical issue. Davis went
on to complete seven laps and
take home the $5000 winner’s
prize purse over Jed Goold, who
finished second with five laps,
just in front of Phil Peterson in
third. MS
Briefs
ASBK rounds added
After the cancellation of
the Australian Superbike
Championship’s opening round
at Phillip Island, two rounds have
been added to the back-end of the
calendar, with the new fi nal round
at the expense of the planned
Tasmanian round at Symmons
Plains. Goulburn’s Wakefield Park
will now be the series’ Round 7
held over 15-17 October before
the championship culminates at
Phillip Island’s Grand Prix Circuit
over 5-7 November for the eighth
and fi nal round. KEL BUCKLEY
SGP set for 11
Another scheduled Speedway
Grand Prix round has been
cancelled but organisers are still
committed to staging 11 rounds
in the 2021 championship. The
round scheduled for the PGE
Narodowy Stadium in Warsaw will
not take place. The SGP series is
set to open with a double-header
at the Anlas Czech Republic FIM
Speedway Grand Prix, in Prague,
on 16 and 17 July. PB
The Wolves’ Masters
(third from L) and
Morris (fifth from L)
amcn.com.au 109
sport INTERVIEW MATT O’CONNELL PHOTOGRAPHY ROB MOTT, MO AND AMCN ARCHIVES

Grid talk

We sit down with father and team manager to leading ASBK privateer Matt
Walters, who owns and runs Kawasaki Connection in NSW’s Hunter region
Matt was one of the first to
progress to the superbike
class after graduating from
a dedicated junior road
race series in Australia – the
MRRDA. What do you think of
the junior road racing scene in
Australia at the moment?
We loved that series, the
MRRDA. It was relatively
inexpensive racing the Moriwaki
bikes and it has produced a
few of the current top riders –
Daniel Falzon and Mike Jones
as well. When Matt moved on
to race RS125s, the first thing
we noticed was the expense.
It wasn’t until we got to race
Superstock 600s that we felt the
playing field was level again.
Carl Walters
The big advantage is that all the
young guys are racing together
regularly, so you foster that
racecraft at a high level early
on. Just being on track with one
another, it is such an important
aspect and I think you see that
in junior road racing today. I
really like what the Cudlins
have going with Motostars, but
I think the main thing with
any junior road race series
is that you have to make it as
affordable as possible. There
is no easier way to dent your
enthusiasm than having big
dollars to spend!
Cessnock is dominated by
dirt-track and off-road riding.
What prompted Matt to get
into road racing?
It was a trip to Phillip Island,
we are great friends with the
Parkes’ and we were down there
watching Broc. I remember
we were standing with Les
watching the racing and Matt
said to me ‘I’m going to do that,
dad.’ And that’s how it went!
Matt was really good in the dirt,
he was fast and he won a lot –
but he also crashed a lot when
he was younger. We believed in
that old adage of ‘you can teach
someone not to crash, but you
can’t teach fast.’
How is the motorcycle
industry travelling from your
perspective as dealer principle?
Since Covid hit, sales have been
incredible. We don’t just stock
bikes, we also do a whole range
of outdoor power sports as well
as zero-turn mowers, that kind
of thing. It’s surprised me just
how well things are going at the
moment, but I guess people just
want to get outside and enjoy
themselves more.
Could the store survive without
ASBK commentator and
Kawasaki tragic Phil Harlum
buying more bikes?
No! [laughs] He’s got a fair green
garage these days!
You’re the top privateer team in

110 amcn.com.au
 Main. Like father like son; Carl and Matt Walters at Kawasaki Connection in Cessnock 1. Matt Walters
got a WorldSBK call-up in 2015 with Team Pedercini Racing. 2. Walters chases Yamaha’s Cru Halliday in
2011 3. Walters was crowned 2010 Aussie Superstock 600 champ 4. Team manager and brolly bloke

1 2

3 “I don’t 4

ASBK, that’s a family run effort
as well?
It’s pretty much family, we’ve
had to learn everything as we
go. Matt is a fully qualified
motorcycle mechanic, which is
very helpful, but putting together
a competitive race package at
this level is very complex and it
takes a lot of hours, a lot of trial
and error to get things right.
At the moment we have been
working with Paul Free and we
think that is going to help bring
Matt to the next level. Paul will
be concentrating on suspension
and the guy is just a legend,
we’re really lucky that he has
the time in his schedule to work
with Matt.
Matt has been knocking on the
door of a podium finish for a few
years. With this new generation
of Superbikes, especially the
electronics, will it still be viable
for privateers to compete?
want the
bikes made
slower, I’d
just like
to see the
gap to the
top not as
wide”
It makes things a lot tougher,
let’s say. In a Superbike team you
really need a suspension guy,
somebody working on chassis
and geometry, somebody doing
the general mechanical work
like servicing, changing tyres,
crash repairs, etc. And now,
you also need someone on
electronics. That level of support
doesn’t come for free, everyone
has to be paid. Also, the people
that know how to do the job
have to be available. That’s why
we delayed the move to the
latest ZX-10RR, there just isn’t
the expertise available to take
advantage of the electronics at
the moment, and I think that is
stretching a lot of teams.
As far as the formula goes, does
MA have it right?
I think they have done an
excellent job these last few
years, to see the series rebound
the way it has. This new
generation of bikes shows there
is always work to be done – I
don’t think anybody wants to
keep watching a show where the
top three are 45 seconds up the
road. We would be supportive
of something like a stock ECU, I
think that could work.
I’ve got no doubt the best
riders are on the best bikes in
this paddock, but the series also
needs privateers to survive…
part of that is to make sure the
playing field is somewhat level.
It’s a tough call, I definitely
don’t want to see bikes made to
be slower, I’d just like to see the
gap to the top three not as wide.
COVID has been a challenge.
Did MA handle the revised
calendar well enough?
Overall, I think MA have done a
great job just to keep us on track
as much as we have. As far as the
circuits go this year, I absolutely
love going to Darwin. Our other
son Mitch is in the army and is
based in Darwin, he has told us
the whole city is buzzing about
the race weekend with Supercars,
so we can’t wait to get up there.
It’s a great opportunity for the
ASBK guys. As far as returning
to Wakefield goes, I’m OK with
it because it’s much easier
logistics-wise than travelling
to Tasmania. But, especially
for anyone that has been there
racing at night, I think we have
to get ASBK back to Sydney
Motorsport Park (SMSP).
For any road racing series to
work in Australia, we are always
going to have to visit tracks like
Morgan Park, Winton and
Wakefield. For Superbikes
though, we need to get them
racing at tracks they were
designed to be operated on, and
to me that means sorting
whatever needs to be sorted out
behind the scenes and getting
back to SMSP.

amcn.com.au 111
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sport
Where are they now?
“Bathurst was as dangerous as
hell, but awesome to ride”
“MY DAD WAS an aircraft
mechanic at Essendon
airport. He raced scrambles
and had a square-four
Ariel, so my three brothers
and I grew up in this
great aircraft/motorbike
environment. That led to an
interest in mechanics with
Dad as a mentor, but I was
pretty much self-taught.
My first ride on a bike was
[brother] Mick’s Jawa 250
that we rode at the local
park. Dad then bought this
basket case Triumph Tiger
100 that we tried to sort
out, then a junked BSA 650
Road Rocket. I then I got a
Yamaha AS-1 125 roadbike
and John Maher, a top
racer at the time, helped
me when I started racing
it after I finished National
Service in 1971.
“The early 70s were great,
you could race every month
and the fields were huge.
This was before proddy
racing so I raced the bog-
stock Yamaha against all
the other C-graders on old
racebikes, etc – basically
run-what-you-brung. I
stepped up to a T250 Suzuki
then the T350, and a ’73
Yamaha RD350. I was racing
with guys like Barry Smith,
Ron Burke and Graeme
Laing, it was cheap and fun.
“I bought a brand-new
TZ250D and shipped it over
to New Zealand for the ’77-
78 Marlboro Series. I was
travelling around in an old
Thames van with Andrew
Johnson and Graeme Muir.
Ajay was on his 350, ‘Goose’
(Muir) had his Egli 750.
“I was the slowest of the
three, but I got the best
results. I was equal fourth
in the 250 series at one
Martin Hone Former nasho, racer, tax officer, road tester, AMCN ad man and aviator
Above: Marty (Yamaha AS-1) in
front of Ron Burke and Barry
Smith at Calder in ’73
Right: Hone and wife Chris
in Toowoomba
point with Mike Vinsen,
behind Gregg Hansford,
Murray Sayle and Rick
Perry from TK A.
“My friend and mechanic
Jim Cook was also with us,
on his honeymoon with his
new bride! Jim’s wife was
taking photos for AMCN,
and I met [then AMCN
editor] Mike Hanlon at
the airport to hand over
the film. We got chatting
about me doing stuff for the
mag. My first big road test
was the Suzuki GSX-1100,
which was photographed
by Colleen Dooley, then
AMCN’s typesetter.
“I road tested with AMCN
through the 80s while
working at the tax office as
an inspector. In 1988, I was
working at the CES when
the ad manager’s job at
AMCN came up. Although
I’m not a salesman, I was a
bit creative, and along with
testing racebikes and all
the high-performance
models, I said yes.
“In the 1977 Castrol
Six-Hour Mick and I were
entered on a Moto Guzzi
Le Mans Mk I. In practice I
threw it away big-time, then
the bike was knocked off its
stand just before the start of
the race. The throttle/front
brake assembly was busted
so Paul Sattler generously
raced off and took the
assembly off his Le Mans
and we hastily fitted it. Mick
had to hot-wire it to start,
and 10 or so laps into the
race he was nerfed off by Joe
Eastmure, game over.
“I did have a bit more
luck in proddy racing
on Colleen’s road-going
GSX750. I finished third
in the 750 class at the 1980
Calder two-hour, and third
at Bathurst. Bathurst, it was
dangerous as hell but just
awesome to ride.
“In 1982, I raced a BMW
R100CS built by Lindsay
Urquhart, and I beat Bob
Brown’s Pantah ridden by
Kevin Magee to win the
Thunderbike series. Then
BMW pulled the pin with
the upcoming release of
the K-series, which was a
big blow.
“In ’83 Frank Hodder gave
me a Laverda 1000RGS to
race, in ’84 he put me on the
TTF1, an exotic endurance
racer and in 1988, I started
racing the late John Trease’s
Harley, a relationship
that lasted 17 years. John
machined or fabricated
just about everything on
that bike, it was all his. We
came very close to winning
the inaugural Australian
Historic Championships at
Phillip Island in 1992, but
we won it the following year.
“I retired when I was 55. I’d
been flying ultralights since
my late 30s and I eventually
built an aluminium kit plane
in ’94 and flew it around
Australia in ’96. We moved
to an air park in Toowoomba
in 2005 and have been here
ever since. In ’05 I raced the
Harley for the last time, flew
down to the Island and won
the race – it was a perfect
way to go out.
“I have great memories
from AMCN, and am proud
to have worked with guys
like Mike Hanlon, Chris
Beattie and Guy Allen
among others!”
DARRYL FLACK
amcn.com.au 113
 Australian Motorcycle News road test photographs are posed for by skilled, professional riders under controlled circumstances. Attempting to imitate their
actions may be dangerous. Australian Motorcycle News supports and endorses rider training and wearing protective riding gear. Especially as you get older.
Hellfire, if Phil Mickelson can win the US PGA golf tourney at nearly 51 years of age, suiting up for a ride is the least we can do, lest we take a tumble. Speaking
of which, even after a lifetime spent making motorcycles operate at mind-boggling speeds, a bicycle can hold some peril. Just ask Troy Bayliss. Tough as nails
is that bloke, though, and we have no doubt he will be back in action soon. Get well TB21!
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