Norton Motorcycles has acquired the Donington Hall estate in the U.K., including its 25 acres of land from airline company British Airways. The property also includes the 45,000 square foot Hastings House facility will become Norton’s new production facility and design studio.

Until now, Norton has been operating out of the Donington Park circuit, which was formerly part of the Donington Hall estate. The Hall itself was built in 1790 and carries a lot of history. During the First World War, the British government requisitioned Donington Hall and used it as a POW camp. The Hall later housed Hungarian refugees fleeing the Soviets after a failed revolution in 1956.

“Donington Hall conjures up a uniquely British way to show style, strength and quality which are all great attributes of the Norton brand,” says Stuart Garner, chief executive officer of Norton Motorcycles. “It became clear some time ago that we had outgrown our current location, to be able to move less than a mile down the road to an outstanding facility like Donington Hall is ideal. It will allow Norton to grow our manufacturing business with focus on ‘built in Britain by British hands’, export growth and job creation.” Continue Reading »

Crashes occur fairly often during motorcycle races but rarely do we see a race bike get as spectacularly demolished as this Triumph Daytona 675.

The crash took place during the Sept.  11 Donington Park round of the Triumph Triple Challenge, a support class in the British Superbike series featuring the Triumph Daytona 675.

Rider Ash Beech low sides going into a corner and thankfully slides relatively safely into the grass. I say relatively because the same cannot be said of his 675.

The video quality isn’t very good; the uploader appears to have shot the footage with his cellphone as it played on a television but commentary comes out very clearly. My favorite comment: “He sees the bike and now all his Christmases have just ended.”

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We’re still in awe of a bizarre incident from the past weekend’s World Superbike Race at England’s Donington Park. If you haven’t heard what happened yet, check the video after the jump or read about it in our race report. We’ve seen crashes before where a rider lost control of his rear wheel, but not like this.

As he rounded the final turn on his sixth lap of Race One, the rear wheel of Team Supersonic racer Maxime Berger’s Ducati 1198 suddenly flew off while the Berger and the rest of the bike continued through the turn. Thankfully, the incident happened at perhaps the slowest section of the track and Berger was able to escape unharmed.

“The ring broke and I was lucky because he broke into a slow corner,” says Berger. “I found myself on the ground without knowing what happened.”

As we can see from the picture below, the spokes had sheared right off the hub. The team’s webpage says the Superbike uses Marchesini forged magnesium wheels but the orange label on the wheel identifies it as an Oz Racing wheel.

Check out the analysis of the crash from Eurosport’s studio panel of Tony Carter, Carl Fogarty, Neil Hodgson and James Haydon after the jump.

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This week is catchup time for Track Facts. Four tracks of the Moto GP 2009 Season will be covered in this installment. Sachsenring, Donington Park, Automotodrom Brno and Indianapolis.

Hit the jump for all the details.

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