Motegi MotoGP Preview - Own The Racetrack
For the past few years, Suzuki has been using the slogan "Own The Racetrack" to market its legendary and long-running GSX-R sports bikes line. Of course, when they use the phrase "own the racetrack" they mean it in a metaphorical sense, of being the best bike out on the […]

Fairy Tale
Everybody loves a story. A story can capture our imagination, and transport us beyond the realms of our daily lives. A story can move us and put us in touch with our deepest feelings. And a story can teach us, by allowing us to walk a mile in another person’s shoes and understand their […]

History In The Making
In most countries, the place you put a race track is somewhere nice and quiet, a long way from civilization - or at least neighbors who might complain. You may, like the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia, locate it a couple of miles from the nearest town, and well out of earshot […]

Turning Point
Strictly speaking, all races are equal. Every race scores 25 points for the winner, 20 points for 2nd place, 16 points for 3rd, so in purely mathematical terms, they are all of equal importance.
Of course, some mathematicians would probably refute that, pointing out that 25 points in the first race of the season […]

Let Battle Commence
The gloves are off. Neither Valentino Rossi nor Casey Stoner were taking any prisoners during their enthralling and almost terrifying battle at Laguna Seca, and since leaving the track, the atmosphere has only gotten worse.
It started with complaints in parc ferme by Casey Stoner that some of Rossi’s passes were too hard […]

Crunch Time

In theory, motorcycle racing is simple. A bunch of riders line up at the start, and the fastest rider and bike combination wins. But theory has a way of falling so disappointingly short when faced with reality, and this is no exception. After all, it isn’t the fastest rider who wins, but the first […]

No Rest
The life of a MotoGP rider can seem utterly sublime to outsiders. Flying around the globe to ride the most advanced motorcycles on the planet at some of the best tracks in the world sounds like a pretty idyllic existence. Combine this with a very generous salary, a three-day work week and continuous VIP […]

The Equalizer
It seems entirely self-evident: the winner of any given motorcycle race on any given Sunday will be the best rider, on the best bike, with the best tires. The rider with the most horsepower, the sweetest handling and the stickiest rubber - and the skill to leverage this magic triptych - should, barring incident, […]

Hard Left
Despite Germany’s status as an economic powerhouse and one of the motors behind European economic growth, the German language has failed to make very many inroads as a global means of communication. Coming too late to Imperialism to spread the language through the methods which worked so successfully for Britain and France - foreign […]

The Rules Of Racing
There’s an old axiom in motorcycle racing that says that you can’t win the race in the first corner. Of course, being a truth universally acknowledged means that at every race, somebody tries to disprove the rule by launching themselves off the starting line in a fit of abandon, hoping that if […]