Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Hydration packs for motorsports have come of age. In the not-too-recent-past, our options were largely repurposed daypacks built for hikers. Now, we have packs designed for many active sports, and the motorsports field has been gifted with varieties of packs designed for differing motorcycle activities. To that end, I have spent the better part of the last six months researching and acquiring three different hydration systems. For the street, based upon Ryan’s recommendation, I bought a Kriega R15. Because I can’t carry a hydration backpack when I already have camera gear strapped to my back, I strap a Hydrapak Hydrasleeve onto my camera bag, and while not an ideal solution, it sure beats not having water on hot summer shoots. For my off-road excursions with my daughter, I have come to depend on the USWE Raw 8 Hydration Backpack, and quite frankly, it is my favorite of the three. If I could, I would use it for all my motorcycling hydration needs. 

The Raw 8’s strap design is what makes it such a great choice for off-road riding. Dubbed the “No Dancing Monkey” harness system, the Raw 8 is designed to disappear when it is on your back. While the terrain that my daughter and I are riding wouldn’t be anywhere close to gnarly, compared to truly experienced dirt riders, the Raw 8 has stayed put over a variety of whoops and washboard bumps that we’ve encountered. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. 

The Raw 8’s mounting system is the secret to its usability. The straps clip centrally over the rider’s sternum for a swing-free fit. This is augmented by the elastic in the adjustable straps that keeps the pack hugging your chest and back while you ride. This snug fit never feels like it restricts movement or breathing. Designed for enduro and off-road riding, the Raw 8’s straps have enough leeway to account for your body size and off-road gear. All of this allows for an even weight distribution of the load while riding and, most importantly, keeping the pack from moving around in rough terrain. 

To help keep you cool, the straps have cut-out sections to allow airflow, while the back padding is constructed with raised wave sections to create channels for airflow. And it really works. If you stop for a few minutes and get sweaty, you’ll feel the cooling evaporation once you start riding again. 

The Ducati Streetfighter V4 lineup is about to add a new, higher-spec SP model. The confirmation comes to us via the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency which listed the Streetfighter V4 SP alongside the Streetfighter V4 and V4S as models certified for 2022.

The certification confirms that the SP’s engine remains the same 1103cc V-Four as the existing Streetfighter models, claiming 208 hp and 90.4 lb-ft. What the certification doesn’t tell us, is what Ducati did to make the new variant worthy to be called an “SP”.

In Ducati-speak, the letters “SP” stand for “Sport Production.” First used on the Ducati 851 and most recently on the Panigale V4 SP, the letters are used to denote a production model with technical upgrades to make it faster on the track. The SP version of the Panigale offers the most clues about what to expect from the Streetfighter V4 SP.

The Panigale V4 SP gained carbon fiber wheels, Brembo Stylema R front brake calipers and a Brembo MCS radial pump with Multiple Click System (MCS) and remote adjuster, all upgrades over the relatively more pedestrian Panigale V4 S.

Twenty-five years and two days ago, we had this to say about Honda’s numba-One selling motorcycle in the USA – Honda CBR600F3. Did it say something wrong, or did our taste just change? Show me something more masochistic and expensive, please…

2021 Harley-Davidson Sportster S

I learned about a new-to-me thing this week in a fun Facebook discussion: Oppositional Defiance Disorder. This affects lots of kids who are so fed up and angry about being criticized for a thing, that they keep on doing that thing just to own the criticizer, even though they know the thing they’re doing is wrong and bad for them. Before psychology, ODD was probably best expressed as cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I’m pretty sure ODD is why Harley made the decision to give only the third all-new Sportster since 1957 two (2) inches of rear suspension travel. We coastal elite sporty riders have been bagging on certain Harleys for that lack of rear travel forever, so what else should we have expected from the bad, black t-shirt boys of midwestern motorcycledom? Scratch that! It’s worse than we thought. The press kit says 1.5 inches rear travel. Whichever number is correct, and you know we’ll get to the bottom of it ASAP, it’s not enough. [This just in from H-D: Rear shock travel is 1.5 inches. Rear wheel travel is 2.o in.]

Lead Designer Brad Richards owns right up. He wants things to be polarizing. If everybody likes it, says Brad, he’s not doing his job. And he’s completely right, because the whole time we latte sippers have been bagging on Hogs for 2-inch rear-wheel travel (forever), they’ve been the biggest-selling motorcycles in the country. ODD, let’s face it, is just good business. Two inches is how we do it in America, and if we have to explain to you why having your lumbar discs reshuffled over every good-sized bump in the road isn’t the greatest moto experience ever, you wouldn’t understand.

Despite gloomy reports of a new surge of COVID-19 cases, you can’t shake the feeling that America’s vast and ravenous economy is roaring back to full-tilt boogie. And Northern California’s motorcycle community had a coming-out party of sorts with the Progressive International Motorcycle Show (IMS) at Sonoma Raceway. The show marked the return of the IMS to Northern California after a six-year absence and everyone I talked to involved in the show – attendees and exhibitors alike – seemed to agree with me when I said the show seemed to have a new energy that made me feel a wee glimmer of hope for the future of motorcycling in the USA.

This year’s show, held in the pit areas of Northern California’s star raceway, was compact compared to the giant exhibit halls I remember from decades past, but it had everything you needed – with a few exceptions. Leather-clad Christian bikers checking your gear? Yes. Earplug and anti-fog goop vendors? Of course. Vintage and custom bike show? Check. Live bands, booze, and (pricey) food? Si, si, and si. Demo rides? Oh, yes.

But no Triumph, BMW, Ducati, or Honda factory involvement, showing there’s still doubt about the efficacy of showing your products this way. In general, the list of vendors was shorter than I remember from 10 or 15 years ago, contributing to the event’s smaller, more intimate nature.

For new riders, the reduced size isn’t an issue – they didn’t go to the plus-sized events of decades past. It’s a “great time to be out here on all these bikes,” 23-year old Kevin Pearson told me. He just got his first bike – a Husqvarna Vitpilen 701 – last Halloween and is in that happy time of a rider’s career where he’s soaking up moto-information like a sponge. The IMS provides tons of it at once, allowing Pearson to try on helmets and riding gear, learn about new rider groups and riding activities, and test-ride the bike’s he’s been reading about, all in one weekend. He rode an electric motorcycle for the first time as well as numerous other bikes.

For many riders, putting gas in their bike is as simple as rolling up to your nearest gas station, putting a credit card in the slot, and filling up the tank. For the majority of riders, that’s all they need to know, other than what to do when it comes time to put their bike in storage.

Racers, and high-performance enthusiasts like myself, however, nerd out over the different ways we can make our machines better. From different exhausts to ECU flashes, suspension, and tires, looking for that performance edge keeps us up at night. This is what led me down the rabbit hole of motorcycle fuels. There are so many options out there, from several different companies. How do you go about choosing? My first thought was simply reading up about fuels the same way anyone else would – I’d Google it.

What I found was primarily targeted towards the car crowd or motocross racers and basically boiled down to which gas a certain team uses and why. While useful information (to some degree), I wasn’t so much curious about anecdotes but more about what goes into fuels (both pump and race) and why they are the way they are. There seems to be a separate language chemists speak when talking about fuels, and all of it is Greek to me.

To help make some sense of what both average street riders and racer folks like myself should concern ourselves about when it comes to fuel, I sought out experts to help talk me through the ins and outs of what all these terms mean and why they matter. Specifically, I talked to Bruce Hendel, Vice President of North America sales for VP fuels; Zachary Santner, Technical Specialist at Sunoco Performance Products; and Ron Finney, Technical Director at Renegade Fuels. As luck would have it, Finney is also a part-time college professor – the perfect guide to breaking down some of these complex topics in language the layperson (read me) can understand.

Aerostich’s story is one of the people. The people in Duluth handcrafting Aerostich products, and the people around the world who’ve turned the Roadcrafter one-piece suit into a cult icon. It’s about people like Andy Goldfine who staunchly believe motorcycling is inherently good for the human race, “a social good,” he says. 

In 1983, as the industrial sewing industry was leaving America and equipment was being auctioned at paltry prices, Andy purchased 16 industrial sewing machines without knowing what he was going to do with them. He was at a point in his life where it was now or never, something had to give. It didn’t take long though for an idea to be born of necessity, as they often are, but it needed a name. Looking for something as generic as possible, he chose to combine aero and stitch. 

“Look mom, I’ve got a business card,” said a young, entrepreneurial Andy Goldfine as he handed a freshly printed card to his mother, a stack of matching letterhead tucked under his arm, “Oh, honey,” she said sympathetically, “You misspelled stitch.” Admittedly never all that great at spelling, Andy replied sheepishly, “Thanks, mom.” At the local library later that week Andy found the word stich did in fact exist and was a literary term for a line in a verse. “That’s okay,” he thought and decided to stick with it. Furthermore, he wouldn’t have to pay the $34 dollars or so that it would cost him to reprint new materials. Looking back, he’s happy with the unique spelling. 

Goldfine’s idea was that if he could create a product to help folks more easily and safely ride motorcycles, he could, in essence, make the world a better place. For nearly 40 years, in a 100-year old former candy factory on the bay of Lake Superior, Andy Goldfine and the Aerostich team have worked toward doing just that. The first Roadcrafter one-piece suit was built in 1983 with that idea in mind. When people realized they could don the Roadcrafter and easily and safely experience the benefits of motorcycling, they’d eventually ditch their cars and ride as many of the 365 days a year that was possible. That was Goldfine’s hope, a subversive approach to the automakers, road builders, and oil companies who surely don’t want motorcycles to take over. 

KTM has revealed a new limited production track bike with the 890 Duke R engine in a bespoke chassis. The 2022 KTM RC 8C will be available for pre-order starting on July 22 at 10 am EST/7 am PST on KTM’s website for $38,999.

We’ve been waiting a long time for the Austrian brand to introduce a new sportbike, and while the RC 8C is designed for track use only, we’re eager to throw a leg over it.

Except we sort of already have, as the RC 8C is a further evolved version of the Kramer GP2 prototype that Troy Siahaan tested in 2018. Krämer, if you recall, is a project by Marcus Krämer, a former KTM employee, that builds track-only sportbikes powered by KTM engines. The GP2 prototype Troy rode was powered by the 790 engine, but the production version uses the 890 engine that KTM is using here on the RC 8C. The GP2 has a different fairing design, but several key elements are present on the RC 8C from the steel trellis frame, swingarm, and the composite fuel tank/tail unit. KTM worked with Krämer Motorcycles to produce the RC 8C, offering a track bike with top-shelf components typically found only on factory racing machines.

World Exclusive! Kramer GP2 Prototype – First Ride

Triumph is going off-road racing, confirming development of a line of competition motocross and enduro models. The British brand says it will start a factory race program, committing to top-tier racing in both disciplines.

To that end, Triumph has enlisted the help of two of the best to ever compete: Motocross legend Ricky Carmichael (a.k.a. “The G.O.A.T”), and five-time Enduro World Champion Iván Cervantes. Carmichael and Cervantes will be active partners with Triumph, assisting in both testing and preparing for competition.

“This is an incredible opportunity for me to join this historic brand, and I am honored and humbled to be a part of the development and release of their off-road motorcycles,” says Carmichael. “Building something from the ground up is something that really is intriguing to me at this stage of my career.”

Full details about its motocross and enduro models will be announced in the next few months, but Triumph says we can expect a “comprehensive range” of motorcycles. At the very least, this should mean four-strokes in the 450cc and 250cc classes, but we can’t completely rule out other displacements or two-stroke models.

“Like me, everyone I am working with at Triumph is focused to make the bikes the best they can be,” says Cervantes. “I cannot wait to see the bikes competing at a world level, but I also look forward to when I can stand in a Triumph dealer and know I was part of this very special project.”

I don’t know how this new Sa1nt gear made it past the actual hipsters at MO who snap up all the good stuff first, but when the Shearling jacket and jeans arrived on my doorstep I felt 30 years younger immediately and briefly considered resigning from the Gray Ponytail Brotherhood.

Unbreakable Straight Jeans 

When I couldn’t get my foot through the lower leg of the size 34 Unbreakable Slim jeans, I felt old again. But when the size 34 Unbreakable Straight jeans I traded them in for arrived, my testosterone level re-boosted. Perfect fit… even a bit roomy (Sa1nt says they run a bit large). It looks like the inseam will be 33 inches on whatever waist size you order; rolling the cuffs up works for me. (Dunno what you do if your inseam is longer?)

Riding jeans are one of the great motorcycling inventions of the last decade, and I apologize to whoever was making them before then. Lots of us rode in regular jeans a lot of the time – blue jeans and leather jacket being the classic outfit since before Brando for casual and, lots of times, even sporty riding. Cycle magazine ran a cover story in 1988, right before I went to work there, about how unprotective your blue jeans are in a crash, and it was rumored that the backlash about that story was what got the Editor in Chief who’d hired me – Phil Schilling – canned. It was blasphemy to point out, graphically, on the cover of the biggest motorcycle magazine in the world that you could get hurt riding motorcycles. Bad for sales, back before helmets were required in California.

The earliest riding jeans I recall weren’t much more than heavy denim jeans with extra stitching and bulky pads stuck in the knees and hips that were good for working on your knees, but not so great for living in the rest of the time.

BMW announced a new partnership with renowned audio company Marshall Amplification, and in doing so, teased the impending launch of two new R18 variants: the R18B bagger and R18 Transcontinental tourer.

Marshall is best known for its guitar amplifiers, but in recent years, the company has ventured into producing headphones and home audio speakers. With the new partnership with BMW, it appears Marshall will be producing audio systems for motorcycles.

BMW says: “the legendary Marshall spirit and the development power of BMW Motorrad will in future be reflected in new innovative products for motorcycles and music, especially in the BMW Motorrad Heritage segment.”

That last sentence is the important clue. BMW’s Heritage segment consists of the R18 and the R NineT lines, which currently do not have a model that is set up for an audio system. We have known for a while, however, that the R18 lineup will eventually include bagger and touring variants. BMW originally filed designs for an R18 model with a large batwing fairing and hard panniers back in July 2019, well before the R18 cruiser was officially introduced.

The press release included the image above which shows a Marshall amp superimposed on part of a motorcycle with a tank similar to the R18 models, a chrome fork tube. The fork tubes on the current R18 and R18 Classic are covered in black sheaths, but the designs for the bagger show the top of the fork tubes are exposed, matching the image.

We’re still not over the OVER Racing Project, the crazy high-end Japanese racing parts purveyors who were the Bimota of Japan in the ’90s, and probably still are. It was their oval aluminum tube frame that inspired Suzuki’s first SV650 a few years after this 1995 piece. Sadly, Los Angeles’ The Garage Company, OVER’s importer, is no more. But there is an OVER website if you’re feeling lucky, along with a FAX number if you’re feeling really lucky and nostalgic.

By MO Staff Mar. 19, 1995

Team Over Racing flew into Southern California from Japan recently for an AHRMA racing event at Willow Springs, and went back three days later. They left behind a new track record for single cylinder motorcycles and three of the most awesome bikes to ever come out of the Orient.

It seems a little unfair to describe the Over Racing Project company as a Japanese version of Bimota, but it fits. They make high-performance motorcycles for both racing and street applications — in limited quantities, mostly by hand — around production motors from other manufacturers. That’s right, all of these bikes, and new ones like them, are for sale — for a price. Depending on the rate of exchange, they can be, well, expensive: Price of entry for a complete bike

ranges from about 15 thousand to 50 or more for a hand-build race machine like the Yamaha TDM850-powered OV-15A. They also make after-market parts — custom, braced and single-sided swingarms, exhaust pipes for most common sport bikes, as well as clip-on handlebars and rear-set footpegs.

Call us crazy, but when we got the invitation to ride the bikes we jumped at the chance. Here’s an Over-view of the three bikes:

We’ve previously reviewed the Insta360 One X action camera. The One X was launched in October 2018 and is capable of shooting 5.7K 30fps 360 video, with features such as Flow-State Stabilization, slow motion at lower frame rates, Bullet-Time video, and more. The camera comes with an easy-to-use and elegantly-designed phone app and desktop app which gives the user absolute control of what portion of a 360 view around the camera they would like to highlight.

MO Tested: Insta360 OneX Camera Review

I came away impressed by the One X’s 360 capabilities to capture all the action around a motorcycle – action that would otherwise be missed by conventional action cameras – but found issues with instability of the .insv video files and found the LCD screen with two-button controls on the camera a bit hard to use in the real world. The 360 technology is a game-changer for what it allows the casual user to easily capture, but the camera design was a bit vulnerable for regular use mounted on motorcycles and corrupted files occurred a bit too often to be easily forgiven.

More recently Insta360 sent us the remarkably tiny and aptly named Insta360 GO 2. Launched in March 2021, the GO 2 utilized Insta360’s Flow-State stabilization and gyroscopic data to give smooth video with a constantly level horizon (no matter how the camera is oriented). About the size and shape of one half a human thumb, the GO 2 was remarkable for all the technology it packed in a tiny, easy-to-use package. The video files proved to be very stable this time around and while the camera offered many positive and moto-friendly features like multiple frame rates and resolutions, effective stabilization, horizon self-leveling, durability, and easy mounting options, the one thing it did not offer was 360 video.

2021 Benelli TRK 502 X

“It’s actually not that bad,” is my most-repeated phrase as I flit from flower to flower on this new Benelli TRK 502 X. We try to give Chinese motorcycles equal opportunity on MO when we can, but it’s frankly not usually a pleasant experience for us or the Chinese motorcycle.

The last Benelli we tested, for instance, was this TnT600 in our 2017 Middleweight Naked Shootout. Like I said then, “It has a firm-enough ride that’s always compliant, its cantilevered rebound-adjustable shock there on the right does nice work. The seat’s comfortable enough, the tapered aluminum handlebar puts the handles in the right spots, engine vibes are under control – and the overall fit and finish is so nice that, right until you ride away, you’d never think you weren’t about to be in for a treat on a perfectly nice exotic European motorcycle.”

But then when you did ride away on the TnT600, well, Thai Long Ly has a way with words: “Beautiful bike. Love the MV-esque tank and the dated high pipes. Like a sexy Italian model, this bike looks great from every angle. Unfortunately, the engine has the pull of 7, perhaps 8 Alpine Marmots, offering all the excitement of jury duty. The bike sounds fast, with an intoxicating wail and whine worthy of a MotoAmerica paddock, but the absolutely anemic inline-Four packs the punch of an anorexic coke whore.”

That sounds a little insensitive now, but Thai was right. The thing had a gaping hole where its poweband should’ve been.

With the official launch of the 2021 Harley-Davidson Sportster S, we now have an understanding of where The Motor Company is taking the Sportster family. Powered by the liquid-cooled Revolution Max 1250T engine, the Sportster S offers a significant step forward, claiming 121 hp, or nearly twice the horsepower of the air-cooled Evolution engine.

With a $14,999 price tag, it’s also a good chunk of change more expensive than the $11,549 Forty-Eight, and the same price as the Street Bob 114 Softail. In this context, it’s clear the newest Sportster is no entry-level model like the previous bikes to bear that label. So, where does this leave the Forty-Eight, the Iron 1200 and the Iron 883?

Keen observers would have probably noticed that Harley-Davidson hasn’t been referring to these bikes as Sportsters for a while now. Up until the Sportster S announcement, Harley-Davidson’s official website has been categorizing them as “Street” models. Today, the former Sportsters are lumped together with the Softails as “Cruisers.” The three air-cooled Sportsters are still a part of Harley-Davidson’s 2021 lineup, but as we previously reported, they likely won’t be back for 2022. If that holds true, it would leave a gap in Harley-Davidson’s lineup for an accessible entry point to the brand.

Naturally, Harley-Davidson has something in the works. The “S” in “Sportster S” implies as much, as Harley-Davidson typically uses that letter to denote a higher-performance variant model. Harley-Davidson also dropped some hints about future additions to the new Sportster family near the end of the Sportster S launch video. In the closing moments, Bill Davidson, vice president of the Harley-Davidson Museum and great grandson of the company co-founder William Davidson, expressed his excitement for “what’s to come”. The video then briefly provided a sneak peak of the future of the Sportster family (at the 12:35 mark if you want to skip ahead).