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Mick Doohan NSR500 art sculpture

How do you best immortalise the great Mick Doohan and the big bang Honda NSR500 with which he dominated Grand Prix racing in the 90s? An Australian artist has answered this by creating an art installation that sees a hand-created replica of the bike exploded and suspended from the ceiling. The Doohan piece is appropriately titled 'The Big Bang' and as artist Eamon O'Tootle describes, "It is a complex sculpture comprising thousands of parts joining to make up a whole and symbolic tribute to the true inherent nature of art and sport – the creativity of design, where the mechanical is modified to suit the needs of man." Eamon added: "The way the Doohan piece came about was that one of the bikes Mick rode had an engine configuration called the Big Bang.

Bahrain track days

A few months ago, expat (and ex racer) John Beddall made contact to ask if I fancied doing some track day instruction out in Bahrain.  After thinking about it for two seconds, flights were booked and a plan was put in place to look after around forty riders for a day at the Bahrain International Circuit (BIC).  Young Taylor Mac was also recruited to look after any tasty riders that I couldn’t deal with   The Brits out there love their bikes, however, quite a few locals also turned up plus a few others from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.  Most were on high end Superbikes, like S1000s, Panigales and RSV4s but there was also a healthy number R6s and new 675Rs.   Although this fabulous Hermann Tilke designed circuit is around ten years old incredibly it has never hosted a bike race.  The highlight of the year there is F1 but being owned by the Bahrainian Royal family, there is no desperate need for the circuit to operate as a profitable business.  The track reminded me of Qatar but much more interesting as some great undulations have been built into its desert location. We shared the track with Supercars on the day (20mins on/20mins off) and as you might imagine it was betty swollocks for seven hours in the 30 plus temperatures.  As usual there was a few offs with poor old RS1000 Aprilia mounted Andy breaking his femur early in the day.  Two other buddies appeared to swap bikes mid air in another incident but fortunately escaped unhurt.In the evening everyone stayed for an al fresco dinner in the paddock with the craic going on for hours as the Fosters kept flowing.   All in all it was a brilliant trip and it has left me thinking there could be cost effective ways of getting Brits out there for track days next winter.  I'll keep you posted.Cape Town next to make my racing comeback at the Killarney 8 hour on a CBR150 Honda.  Hopefully I can manage the beast, I'll post a full report next week.

Report: Dorna to Replace Superstock Classes with More Stock-Inspired WSBK and New 250cc Class

The coming World Superbike racing season may be the last to feature Superstock classes as series promoter Dorna tries to differentiate its WSBK and MotoGP properties. According to Italian outlet Motosprint, Dorna plans to rewrite the World Superbike and Supersport class rulebooks for the 2014 season to make the race bikes closer to their respective production models. This would create further separation between WSBK and MotoGP, with Superbike racing moving closer to its production-based roots while prototypes racing in the GP series.