Yamaha FZ Motorcycles in Tampa, page #60

Moto blog

Yamaha Pro Am madness, the best one make championship ever?

I’m biased of course, but the best one make road race championship has to be the Yamaha RD 350LC Pro Am series. Back in the days when manufacturers had spare cash (1980 to be precise), Mitsui Yamaha organised this televised championship at major British race meetings to promote the recently launched, and now iconic, Yamaha RD350LC. Twenty four riders (twelve established and twelve rookies) were chosen by a panel of experts then given a completely free season of racing with a very generous prize fund thrown in.

John Reynolds: Riding Masterclass

When I first started racing about a thousand years ago, my local stomping ground was a place called Three Sisters near Wigan.  It wasn’t glamorous but it was brilliant. An hour from home and with about a million corners crammed into just a km of tarmac. The Three Sisters was a reference to the three coal slag heaps that had once occupied the site before.

What Has James Stewart Been Up To? [video]

The last time we checked up on James Stewart, he wasn’t having a good year. First, there was the season-ending injury in the second round of the 2010 AMA Supercross campaign, an ill-advised comeback at the Unadilla National, and then a much-panned open letter after getting left off Team USA for the Motocross of Nations. In all, Stewart took part in just three races in 2010.

Air time Kenny Roberts-style

I can’t get enough of pictures that capture a specific, hard to define moment; the successful encapsulation of the absolute balls-to-the-wall, life or death commitment that riding a motorbike as fast as possible involves.  We all know. We’ve all been there – even if it’s only a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Maybe (for us mere mortals) it’s that rapidly, yet unexpectedly, tightening left-hand bend with a shitty, mud-covered veneer just at the apex.

Milan Show: Moto2 tried and tested

The insanity of Moto2 doesn't seem like the right home for the elegance of the Rizoma brand. But the Rizoma ProGuard system has helped secure the levers of Toni Elias on his road to championship success in the inaugural Moto2 season. The example above was on an attractive Rizoma-enhanced BMW S1000RR, but the lever guards are not limited to sports bikes, they were also visible on Yamaha's FZ8.  The patented design can tilt up to 10 degrees providing full lever coverage and can be added by simply replacing the bike's existing bar-ends.

Glen Richards back with Embassy Racing

One of the unsung heroes of the BSB paddock over the past few seasons, has to be 2010 Superstock 1000 runner up Glen Richards. A nasty tumble in at the Brands Hatch opener lead to four DNFs, but once back on track he pushed the dominant BMWs hard, finishing on the podium eight times. While many were trading their grannies to fund new S1000RRs, Richards kept the faith and rode the wheels off his Padgett’s Honda Fireblade.

New Rossi AGVs: Investments for the future

Valentino Rossi is edging towards the twilight of his career and anything that has been attached to the biggest star to come out of MotoGP is destined to be worthy of a collector’s treasure trove. Whenever Rossi has raced at a track that has some kind of importance to the Italian his AGV often gets coated with a one-off Aldo Drudi special, this year has seen the Wake Up! and Faces designs.

GSX-R600 and CBR250R the glass is half full

Suzuki’s GSX-R600 might not look that much different to the outgoing model but I suspect this bike could be very much a dark horse in 2011. I say this because two years ago I was definitely not building my hopes up en route to the K9 GSXR 1000 launch. The leaked pictures suggested the biggest change from the 2007 version would be some fresh graphics but I was so wrong.  As it turned out, I was greeted in Almeria with a brand new bike, built from the tarmac up and it proved to be more than a match in every department for the much hyped 2009 Yamaha R1.

Lovely new R1 cans from Harris

Harris Performance has just unveiled their new slip-on silencers and carbon composite heat shield for the 2009/10 Yamaha R1. Made to the usual Harris standards the cans are created from stainless steel and titanium. The silencers have fully removable baffles helping your R1 to breathe more easily and produce a fruity exhaust note.

A crater looking for a grid reference?

THIS IS the 'Black Devil' - the latest traffic jam-busting, kamikaze two-wheel nutcase who seems to have little respect for not only his own life but eveyone else on the road, too. The rider in question has filmed himself tearing up Moscow's roads in a suicidal fashion, diving between lines of traffic in a bid to impress viewers of his hi-speed antics aboard a Yamaha R1. If he keeps this kind of activity up expect a report on his untimely demise sometime in the near future.