1978 Honda Hawk Automatic Transmission on 2040-motos

Moto blog

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.

2012 Honda NC700X and NC700S Debut in Canada – MSRP Expected to be “Under $9000″ [Video]

There are no plans yet to bring either model to the U.S., but Honda is bringing its new NC700S and NC700X models to Canada for the summer of 2012. American Honda will however, likely be keeping a close eye on how the new models do with its northern neighbor (or perhaps “neighbour”) before deciding whether to import the NC700 models stateside. Making their North American debuts at the 2011 Toronto Motorcycle Show, the naked standard NC700S and the more adventure-touring styled NC700X represent a new product family for Honda, sharing the same frame and 670cc parallel Twin engine with each other and the Honda Integra scooter-motorcycle crossover (speaking of which, there are no plans for the Integra to come to either the U.S.

2013 AMA Supercross Anaheim 2 Race Report

Ryan Villopoto claimed his first win of the 2013 AMA Supercross season and his first since the knee injury at last year’s Seattle round that kept him out of the 2012 AMA Motocross championship. The victory in front of 37,789 fans at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Calif., made up for his disappointing 16th place finish two weeks earlier at the same site. His Monster Energy Kawasaki teammate Jake Weimer held the early advantage in the main event, taking the holeshot ahead of the Honda Muscle Milk duo of Justin Barcia and Trey Canard.