2013 Yamaha V Star 1300 on 2040-motos

Moto blog

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!

Brammo Earns Seventh Place Against Gas Bikes

This past weekend, Brammo arrived to Sonoma Raceway in Central California ready to do battle. Only this time the electric sportbike manufacturer would be trading blows not with other electric bikes, but with their ICE counterparts at the second round of the American Federation of Motorcyclists series — one of the oldest club racing organizations in the country. We recently mentioned Brammo’s eligibility with AFM, and this weekend was the first outing. Team Icon Brammo and its two riders Eric Bostrom and Steve Atlas competed on the Empulse RR machines while third rider, Shelina Moreda, rode the Team Parker Brammo Empulse TTX — a modified version of the road-legal Empulse.

2023 Yamaha Tracer 9 GT+ Review – First Ride

Yamaha’s sports tourer middleweight receives an influx of technology for 2023 Astute readers are probably wondering why Motorcycle.com is publishing a First Ride of a bike that’s not coming to the States this model year. Our reasoning is that, thanks to the sleuthing of Dennis Chung, we suspect the Yamaha Tracer 9 GT+ will be coming to the U.S. in 2024.