08 Victory Hammer on 2040-motos

Moto blog

Anthony West Can’t Afford to Pay to Race MotoGP, Mulls Retirement

The 2012 MotoGP season is still months away and the world championship has already lost an entry, as veteran Anthony West announced his withdrawal from the series because he cannot afford to compete. The 30-year-old Australian racer was included on the provisional 2012 MotoGP entry list to compete for the Speed Master team on an Aprilia CRT machine. But with the official pre-season test at Sepang, Malaysia, coming up next week, West says he will not race because teams are asking riders to pay too much to race for them.

Rainy BSB tests are nothing new

THE combination of bad weather in the UK and a European testing ban means that most BSB teams will now start the season with very little track time. This sounds like a disaster for the top teams but history has proved this isn’t necessarily true and it sometimes doesn’t matter how much pre season preparation has taken place.  Back in 2002 Sean Emmett won on the IFC Ducati at the opening Silverstone round after first riding it in unofficial practice the same weekend. Steve Hislop took the other win on Pauls Bird’s well sorted Ducati. More recently in 2009, Leon Camier took an untested new model R1 Yamaha to victory at the Brands Hatch opener after GSE took delivery of the bike just the week before. Sylvain Guintoli won the other race on a well developed, well tested Crescent Suzuki. You could argue if no one has had testing then it is a level playing field but you have to feel for riders moving up to the superbike class in the world’s toughest national series.  Tyco Suzuki’s PJ Jacobson is one such rider but having spent some time with him over the past few weeks he seems to be taking it all in his stride. It may be the confidence of youth or maybe the fact he has won in every other class he has entered in his short BSB career, but I suspect he fancies at least standing on the Superbike podium at Brands (He also does a bit of ice racing which is not dissimilar to the this year’s UK testing).  The testing ban was implemented with all the best cost cutting intentions and if it had been any other year in the past decade all would be well. The teams may be feeling frustrated but the fans should be excited. With so many unknowns, the 2013 BSB opener at Brands Hatch could be the best ever!

2010 USA TTXGP: Round One in full

WITH BIKES LAPPING at 18 seconds off times posted by the AMA Superbikes, competitors in the inaugural TTXGP North America series still enjoyed a good old scrap at Infineon Raceway, California. An eclectic mix of bikes lined up for the start of the 2010 TTXGP series; a modified 1966 Norton and a 2010 Mavizen TTX02 Superbike were just two of the machines that took part in the race. US rider Shawn Higbee took victory in the event, riding for team Zero Agni.