2003 Honda Vtx on 2040-motos

Moto blog

Simon and Leo

If you are a track day regular this year, you may well have bumped into former racer and friendly Kiwi, Simon Crafar. I first met him in Malaysia in 1990 when he was riding for a Yamaha dealer team, sweating his way round circuits like Shah Alam and Johor Bahru but with a long term plan to make it onto the World scene. And he didn’t take long as after riding for Honda in the UK in 1992 he moved to WSB in 1994 and enjoyed success with both the Honda and Kawasaki factory teams.

Honda To Build All-Green Test Track For E-Bikes And Cars

Honda has been making motions about its intentions to enter the electric motorcycle market with the RC-E concept bike and the Mugen Shinden Ni electric race bike (pictured above). Those plans are further bolstered by the news Honda will be constructing a test track dedicated entirely to the development of electric motorcycles and cars. Building an entirely new test track requires a massive amount of  resources, and Honda intends to make this project 100% self-sustainable by using 70,000 solar panels, spread out over 33 hectares, with the track and remaining facilities taking up another 25 hectares.

2013 Dakar Rally Results

Cyril Despres won his fifth career Dakar Rally while helping KTM win for the 12th consecutive time, in taking the motorcycle class in the 2013 edition of the famed off-road race. KTM was again the dominant manufacturer with the top five finishers in the motorcycle class riding motorcycles from the Austrian manufacturer. Despres finished with an overall time of 43:24:22 for the win, including a 15-minute penalty for swapping an engine after the one he was using in his KTM 450 Rallye failed.