Two Wheels

[wino]

FIM announce changes to 2012 MotoGP calendar


Wednesday, 14 December 2011
The FIM has released an announcement citing changes to the 2012 MotoGP schedule, including the naming of Sachsenring as host to the German Grand Prix.
The FIM announced changes to the MotoGP World Championship 2012 provisional calendar, which include a change of date for the opening round in Qatar, the confirmation of the Jerez circuit contract plus the designation of Sachsenring as the circuit to host the Grand Prix of Germany (pending confirmation of the contract). The new schedule for 2012 is as follows:

Date, Grand Prix - Circuit
8 April, Qatar* - Doha/Losail
29 April, Spain - Jerez de la Frontera
6 May, Portugal (STC) - Estoril
20 May, France - Le Mans
3 June, Catalunya - Catalunya
17 June, Great Britain - Silverstone
30 June, Netherlands** - Assen
8 July, Germany (STC) - Sachsenring
15 July, Italy - Mugello
29 July, United States*** - Laguna Seca
19 August, Indianapolis - Indianapolis
26 August, Czech Rep. - Brno
16 September, San Marino & Riviera di Rimini - Misano
30 September, Aragon - Motorland
14 October, Japan - Motegi
21 October, Malaysia - Sepang
28 October, Australia - Phillip Island
11 November, Valencia - Ricardo Tormo – Valencia
* Evening Race
** Saturday Race
*** Only MotoGP class
STC (Subject to the contract)

 

[wino]

oopps

I bought another one

 

[wino]

GP Commission approve new rules changes


Friday, 16 December 2011
The Grand Prix Commission approved various rules changes with effect from the 2012 season.
The Grand Prix Commission, composed of Messrs. Carmelo Ezpeleta (Dorna, Chairman), Ignacio Verneda (FIM Executive Director, Sport), Herve Poncharal (IRTA) and Takanao Tsubouchi (MSMA) in the presence of Javier Alonso (Dorna), Mike Trimby (IRTA) and Paul Butler (Secretary of the meeting), in a meeting held on 14 December in Madrid, decided the following:
Sporting Regulations
A revised wording of the testing regulation was approved. This incorporated the various decisions made earlier in 2011 concerning this matter.
Additionally it was decided that contracted riders in the MotoGP class may also test machines using the allocation of 240 tyres available to each manufacturer's team. Previously such testing was restricted to test riders only. In the interest of fair competition it was also agreed that other MotoGP class riders could exclusively test their team machines with a limit of 120 tyres per rider.
It was agreed that riders who did not qualify for the race based on their time in the qualifying practice can qualify if they achieve a time at least equal to 107% of the fastest rider in the warm up. This is an addition to the previous regulation which only considered free practice sessions.
Under the regulation concerning MotoGP class riders starting the race from pit lane due to an engine durability sanction, it was agreed that in future they will start ten seconds after the green light is shown at the pit lane exit.
Riders in all classes may now use a starter engine on the grid. For all classes tyre warmers may now remain in place until the display of the one minute board. Generators must still be removed at the three minute board.
Technical Regulations
With effect from 2012, for all classes, it will be compulsory to display a red rear light in rain conditions.
The minimum weight limits for 1000cc machines in the MotoGP class will be increased from the current 153 kilos.
- Effective from 2012: 157 kilos
- Effective from 2013: 160 kilos
The permitted wheel sizes for the Moto3 class were confirmed as:
Front 2.50" x 17" only
Rear 3.50" x 17" only
Several detail changes to regulations, submitted by the Technical Director were all approved.
A list of MotoGP class entries for 2012 was considered by the Commission. The list contained nine entries plus one reserve entry using CRT machinery of various types. Participation of all CRT entries was approved by the Commission on the understanding that the granting of CRT Status was subject to review by the Grand Prix Commission at any time.

 

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[wino]

http://www.slothster.com/2204-Man-On-Motorcycle-Rides-Under-Tractor.html


http://www.crash.net/motogp/video/173108/1/new_king_kennys_yzr500_return_at_laguna_seca.html


http://www.falconmotorcycles.com/gallery/5-The Black .html#0



http://www.gaskrank.tv/tv/motorrad-fun/renntaxi-in-ledenon-frankreich-14669.htm

 

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[wino]

Hunter Thompson's Song of the Sausage Creature



In 1995, "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson reviewed the Ducati 900 SS/SP for Cycle World Magazine. The resulting piece, entitled
"Song of the Sausage Creature" doesn't give much detail on the machine itself, but captures the mental experience of riding on the edge of sanity quite well.

Hunter S. Thompson

There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright red, hunchback, warp-speed 900cc café racer is one of them -- but I want
one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.

Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too
many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these
super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack -- and even there, they will scare the whimpering shit out of you.... There
is, after all, not a pig's eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get
what you want, and on others, you get what you need.


When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike.
It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot damn," they said, "We will take it to
the track and blow the bastards away."

"Balls," I said. "Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Café Racers."

The Café Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5,000-foot straightaway is one thing, but
pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess turn is quite another. But we like it. A thoroughbred Café Racer will ride all night through
a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest decreasing-radius turn since Genghis Khan
invented the corkscrew.

Café Racing is mainly a matter of taste. It is an atavistic mentality, a peculiar mix of low style, high speed, pure dumbness, and overweening
commitment to the Café Life and all its dangerous pleasures.... I am a Café Racer myself, on some days -- and many nights for that matter --
and it is one of my finest addictions....

I am not without scars on my brain and my body, but I can live with them. I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a Vincent Black Shadow,
or when I walk into a public restroom and hear crippled men whispering about the terrifying Kawasaki Triple.... I have visions of compound femur-fractures
and large black men in white hospital suits holding me down on a gurney while a nurse called "Bess" sews the flaps of my scalp together with a stitching drill.

Ho, ho. Thank God for these flashbacks. The brain is such a wonderful instrument (until God sinks his teeth into it). Some people hear Tiny Tim singing
when they go under, and others hear the song of the Sausage Creature.

When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had threatened
my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had something to do with the
polo crowd.

The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they
knew I would go for it. Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mph café racer. And include some license plates, so he'll think it's a
streetbike. He's queer for anything fast.

Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the fastest motorcycle
ever tested by Hot Rod magazine." I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the
Kawa 750 triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid.... I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson,
Grace Slick, Ron Zigler, and my infamous old friend, Ken Kesey, a legendary Café Racer.

Some people will tell you that slow is good -- and it may be, on some days -- but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of
the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba....

So when I got back from New York and found a fiery red rocket-style bike in my garage, I realized I was back in the road-testing business.

Ducati 900 SS/SP Supersport
The brand-new Ducati 900 Campione del Mundo Desmodue Supersport double-barreled magnum Café Racer filled me with feelings of lust every time I looked
at it. Others felt the same way. My garage quickly became a magnet for drooling superbike groupies. They quarreled and bitched at each other about who would
be first to help me evaluate my new toy.... And I did, of course, need a certain spectrum of opinions, besides my own, to properly judge this motorcycle.
The Woody Creek Perverse Environmental Testing Facility is a long way from Daytona or even top-fuel challenge sprints on the Pacific Coast Highway, where
teams of big-bore Kawasakis and Yamahas are said to race head-on against each other in death-defying games of "chicken" at 100 miles an hour....

No. Not everybody who buys a high-dollar torque-brute yearns to go out in a ball of fire on a public street in L.A. Some of us are decent people who want to stay
out of the emergency room, but still blast through neo-gridlock traffic in residential districts whenever we feel like it.... For that we need fine Machinery.

Which we had -- no doubt about that. The Ducati people in New Jersey had opted, for reasons of their own, to send me the 900SP for testing -- rather
than their 916 crazy-fast, state-of-the-art superbike track racer. It was far too fast, they said -- and prohibitively expensive -- to farm out for testing
to a gang of half-mad Colorado cowboys who think they're world-class Café Racers.

The Ducati 900 is a finely engineered machine. My neighbors called it beautiful and admired its racing lines. The nasty little bugger looked like
it was going 90 miles an hour when it was standing still in my garage.

Taking it on the road, though, was a genuinely terrifying experience. I had no sense of speed until I was going 90 and coming up fast on a
bunch of pickup trucks going into a wet curve along the river. I went for both brakes, but only the front one worked, and I almost went end over
end. I was out of control staring at the tailpipe of a U.S. Mail truck, still stabbing frantically at my rear brake pedal, which I just couldn't
find.... I am too tall for these New Age roadracers; they are not built for any rider taller than five-nine, and the rearset brake pedal was not
where I thought it would be. Midsize Italian pimps who like to race from one café to another on the boulevards of Rome in a flat-line
prone position might like this, but I do not.

I was hunched over the tank like a person diving into a pool that got emptied yesterday. Whacko! Bashed into the concrete bottom,
flesh ripped off, a Sausage Creature with no teeth, f-cked-up for the rest of its life.

We all love Torque, and some of us have taken it straight over the high side from time to time -- and there is always Pain in that.... But
there is also Fun, in the deadly element, and Fun is what you get when you screw this monster on. BOOM! Instant takeoff, no screeching or
squawking around like a fool with your teeth clamping down on your tongue and your mind completely empty of everything but fear.

No. This bugger digs right in and shoots you straight down the pipe, for good or ill.

On my first takeoff, I hit second gear and went through the speed limit on a two-lane blacktop highway full of ranch traffic. By the time I went up
to third, I was going 75 and the tach was barely above 4,000 rpm....

And that's when it got its second wind. From 4,000 to 6,000 in third will take you from 75 to 95 in two seconds -- and after that, Bubba, you
still have fourth, fifth, and sixth. Ho, ho.

I never got into sixth, and I didn't get deep into fifth. This is a shameful admission for a full-bore Café Racer, but let me tell you
something, old sport: This motorcycle is simply too goddamn fast to ride at speed in any kind of normal road traffic unless you're ready to
go straight down the centerline with your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat.

When aimed in the right direciton at high speed, though, it has unnatural capabilities. This I unwittingly discovered as I made my
approach to a sharp turn across some railroad tracks, saw that I was going way too fast and that my only chance was to veer right
and screw it on totally, in a desparate attempt to leapfrog the curve by going airborne.

It was a bold and reckless move, but it was necessary. And it worked: I felt like Evil Knievel as I soared across the tracks with
the rain in my eyes and my jaws clamped together in fear. I tried to spit down on the tracks as I passed them, but my mouth was too
dry.... I landed hard on the edge of the road and lost my grip for a moment as the Ducati began fishtailing crazily into oncoming
traffic. For two or three seconds I came face to face with the"> Sausage Creature....

But somehow the brute straightened out. I passed a school bus on the right and then got the bike under control long enough to gear
down and pull off into an abandoned gravel driveway where I stopped and turned off the engine. My hands had seized up like claws and
the rest of my body was numb. I felt nauseous and I cried for my mama, but nobody heard, then I went into a trance for 30 or 40
seconds until I was finally able to light a cigarette and calm down enough to ride home. I was too hysterical to shift gears, so I went
the whole way in first at 40 miles an hour.

Whoops! What am I saying? Tall stories, ho, ho.... We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny.
We shit on the chests of the Weird....

But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when
it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his
body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. If you go slow and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad
rider, you should not ride motorcycles.

The emergence of the superbike has heightened this equation drastically. Motorcycle technology has made such a great leap
forward. Take the Ducati. You want optimum cruising speed on this bugger? Try 90 mph in fifth at 5,500 rpm -- and just then, you
see a bull moose in the middle of the road. WHACKO! Meet the Sausage Creature.

Or maybe not: The Ducati 900 is so finely engineered and balanced and torqued that you can do 90 mph in fifth through a
35-mph zone and get away with it. The bike is not just fast -- it is extremely quick and responsive, and it will do amazing things....
It is a little like riding the original Vincent Black Shadow, which would outrun an F-86 jet fighter on the takeoff runway, but at the end, the
F-86 would go airborne and the Vincent would not, and there was no point in trying to turn it. WHAMO! The Sausage Creature strikes again.

There is a fundamental difference, however, between the old Vincents and the new bred of superbikes. If you rode the Black
Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the
Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that went straight; the Ducati is like the magic bullet that went sideways
and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time. It was impossible. But so was my terrifying sideways leap across railroad
tracks on the 900SP. The bike did it easily with the grace of a fleeing tomcat. The landing was so easy I remember thinking,
goddamnit, if I had screwed it on a little more I could have gone a lot further.

Maybe this is the new Café Racer macho. My bike is so much faster than yours that I dare you to ride it, you lame little turd. Do you
have the balls to ride this BOTTOMLESS PIT OF TORQUE?

That is the attitude of the New Age superbike freak, and I am one of them. On some days they are about the most fun you can have
with your clothes on. The Vincent just killed you a lot faster than a superbike will. A fool couldn't ride the Vincent Black Shadow
more than once, but a fool can ride a Ducati 900 many times, and it will always be bloodcurdling kind of fun. That is the Curse of Speed
which has plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME."

 

[wino]

 

[wino]

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6F2C1AA934B91553

 

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[wino]

fuck !!





Hayden injured in training accident


Thursday, 29 December 2011
Nicky Hayden’s winter vacation was marred on Tuesday, December 27, when he broke his left scapula and fractured two ribs while training near his home in Owensboro, Kentucky.
Hayden was training at a private indoor flat track facility, riding a motorcycle for the first time since breaking his scaphoid at the Valencia Grand Prix on November 6. He underwent an X-ray and CAT scan on the same day he was injured, and he has since undergone an MRI. At the moment, there are no plans for surgery, but Hayden will have the scapula reassessed next week by Dr. Arthur Ting in Fremont, California, to see how his fracture is progressing. According to the healing process, the next few weeks will determine whether Hayden will take part in the first winter test session of 2012, which will begin on January 31 in Sepang, Malaysia.
"Obviously, injuries are never good," Hayden said, "but it’s part of motorcycle racing. Just like at Valencia, it was kind of a freak accident. I was starting to train again, like I normally do during the winter, at a private track near my house. I came up behind another rider, and he went to move out of the way. I wasn’t going that fast, but he clipped my front wheel and I went down and landed pretty hard on my left shoulder, and that was it. It’s disappointing, but there’s nothing to do about it but heal quickly. Anyway, this doesn’t change my expectations for 2012 which, fortunately, is just around the corner."

 

[wino]

The French MotoGP rider Randy de Puniet has been spending a fair bit of time in Australia lately. So when he needed a bike to get around Sydney, he gave Deus a call. “Randy’s design brief was for a middleweight, 2-up twin,” says Deus creative director Carby Tuckwell. “Easy enough to kick around the city, and with enough legs for out of town.” Deus’ head wrench Jeremy Tagand is also French, so this custom Kawasaki W650 has been dubbed The French Connection. It’s been lowered at both ends, and the rims and hubs have been given a film of black satin paint to accentuate the big-tired look. The tank is from an SR500, with a simple Daytona speedometer tucked into the front cut-out; a vintage-style headlight supports the tachometer.

Read more: http://www.bikeexif.com/kawasaki-w650-deus#ixzz1iS0wzQqq​

With the air box gone, this W650 breathes in through K&N filters, and out via a custom 2-into-2 exhaust system. To add to the old school look, the fork legs were swapped over and the Tokico caliper positioned on the lefthand side. The forks themselves have been upgraded with higher-performance internals, and Ikon shocks keep the back end planted. The front and rear fenders are custom, and the whole shebang is finished off in a hard-hitting orange, black and white paintjob. It certainly looks the business—and with de Puniet on board, should be a match for much bigger machines around the city streets

 

[wino]

http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/2182850593/bikes-stage-2

 

[wino]

 

[magoo]

All it needs now is panniers with a bag of sawdust and a coal shovel

 

[wino]

thats just wrong the cleanest thing on it is the turbo, where did ya find this ?

who is this Magoo ? circa 1996