AMA Pro Racing released a preliminary calendar for its 2013 Road Racing season. The tentative schedule contains nine confirmed rounds with another two to be confirmed. Next season will again see four classes of racing: AMA Pro National Guard Superbike, AMA Pro GoPro Daytona Sportbike, AMA Pro Motorcycle-Superstore.com SuperSport, and the AMA Pro Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson series which returns under its new name.

The 2013 season kicks off March 14-16 at Daytona International Speedway for the 72nd running of the Daytona 200. The 2013 season will also see AMA Pro Racing once again sharing the stage with both MotoGP and the World Superbike World Championship.

The Superbike, Sportbike and SuperSport classes will be at Laguna Seca in Monterey, Calif., July 19-21 with MotoGP for the U.S. Grand Prix. The Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson Series will be at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Aug. 16-18 with MotoGP and the Moto2 World Championship for the Indianapolis Grand Prix. AMA Pro Racing will go back to Laguna Seca on Sept. 27-29 along with WSBK. Continue Reading »

Max Biaggi will retire as a champion, announcing his decision to step away from the sport after winning his second World Superbike Championship by just half a point.

The man known as the Corsair and the Roman Emperor announced his retirement this morning at a press conference at the Vallelunga circuit near Rome, Italy. Biaggi ends his 21-year international racing career with six world championships, with four consecutive 250cc Grand Prix titles from 1994 to 1997 to go along with his 2010 and 2012 WSBK titles.

All but one of Biaggi’s titles were won on Aprilia machines with his 1997 250cc World Championship recorded on a Honda. By retiring now, Biaggi leaves on his own terms while still a competitive racer, turning down a contract extension with Aprilia. Continue Reading »

As the Ducati Factory World Superbike team finalizes its plans for the introduction of the 1199 Panigale into the series, two things are certain: 2011 champion Carlos Checa will be the team’s lead rider, and Team Althea Racing, who have worked with Ducati since 2010, will not be the team’s sponsor. Continue Reading »

The International Motorcycling Federation and the Superbike Racing Commission released a number of amendments to the 2013 World Superbike Championship rulebook including pitstops, fake headlights and a revised starting grid alignment.

We’ve already seen the fake headlights with Kawasaki getting a jump on the new regulation earlier this season with headlight decals on Tom Sykes‘ and Loris Baz‘s ZX-10R. Starting in 2013, all superbikes will have fake headlights to resemble their homologated production models. The idea is create a closer visual tie between the race bikes and their street-legal counterparts. Superbikes will switch to 17-inch wheels from the current 16.5-inch wheels, another move to bring them closer to production models. Continue Reading »

The International Motorcycling Federation released a provisional calendar for the 2013 World Superbike Championship. The 2013 season will see a new round in India, the return of Jerez, and Laguna Seca replacing Miller Motorsports Park as the series’ lone U.S. stop.

The 2013 WSBK season kicks off Feb. 26 at Australia’s Phillip Island circuit with Superbikes supported by the World Supersport Championship. Two weeks later, the series will make its Indian debut at the Buddh International Circuit near New Delhi.

The series then shifts to Europe starting with Spain’s Aragon circuit where the Superstock class will begin its 2013 season. Continue Reading »

American John Hopkins announced he is taking a sabbatical from racing for 2013 to recover from a number of significant injuries.

Hopkins’ once very promising racing career has been hampered by both a series of bad luck and injury. It seems so long ago that Hopkins finished fourth overall in the 2007 MotoGP Championship with Suzuki. When the only people who finished ahead of him were Casey Stoner, Dani Pedrosa and Valentino Rossi, he had to be doing something right.

After one more season with Suzuki Hopkins moved on to the Kawasaki factory team, racing for one season before the manufacturer pulled out of MotoGP. That led Hopkins to World Superbikes where he raced an injury-filled 2009 season for Stiggy Honda that ended with the team also folding at the end of the year.

The Ramona, Calif., native revived his career with a second-overall finish in the 2011 British Superbike Championship, exploring options for a return to MotoGP before reuniting with Suzuki and longtime team manager and supporter Paul Denning for the 2012 WSBK season. Continue Reading »

You would think carrying a 30.5 point lead into the final round of the 2012 World Superbike Championship would be a safe enough margin to win the title. Aprilia‘s Max Biaggi made it interesting, inexplicably crashing out of the first race at the finale in Magny-C0urs before scoring a fifth place finish in Race Two to give him a 0.5 point margin over Kawasaki‘s Tom Sykes to win the title.

The 358 to 357.5 point difference is the narrowest finish ever in WSBK. The final round capped off a season that saw Biaggi leading the points chase nearly the entire campaign despite looking very vulnerable at times through the season.

“This is the fourth world championship out of six that I have won at the final race, I seem to like difficult challenges!” says Biaggi. “The 2012 season went right down to the wire: we started well with a win at Phillip Island after totally renewing my team and we also had some difficult moments. We had to work hard to win the title, and maybe for this reason it’s even better. A big thanks to the Team, Aprilia and the Gruppo Piaggio, from President Colaninno to every factory worker, because my success is the result of the work of a great Italian company. Thanks also to my family, my fiancée and my two children, as well as Marino Laghi who is always present with me.”

Continue Reading »

Honda announced it is replacing KTM as the spec-bike supplier for the 2013 European Junior Cup. The youth racing series will use an all-new Honda sportbike to be revealed at the 2012 EICMA show in November, expected to be the CBR500 captured in spy photos.

The European Junior Cup is for young racers ages 14-19 and runs at select rounds of the World Superbike Championship. This season, the series used the KTM 690 Duke but when it was first introduced in 2011, the series used the Kawasaki Ninja 250. Ironically, it looks like the series will now use the CBR500 which would be Honda‘s response to the 250′s replacement, the Ninja 300.

The stakes for the 2013 European Junior Cup will be higher than in previous seasons. The winner of the 2013 Cup series will be awarded a spot on a Honda team in the 2014 UEM Superstock 600 European Championship, a stepping stone towards bigger and higher levels of racing. Continue Reading »

Private equity firm Bridgepoint announced it is repositioning its two premiere motorcycle properties, MotoGP and the World Superbike Championship, under the Dorna Sports banner. It’s not quite a merger, as the two championships will continue working independently, but it does open up the potential for more cooperation between the two and the ability to share marketing resources.

Bridgepoint purchased MotoGP promoter Dorna in 2006 and added WSBK promoter Infront Motorsports in 2011, gaining control of the world’s top motorcycle prototype and production racing properties. Of course, the decision to acquire Infront had less to do with the rights to WSBK as it did the rights to Infront’s 120 or so other sports properties including the FIFA World Cup.

Until now, business has continued as normal for the two occasionally rival racing bodies. Dorna will now assume organization of both series while Infront will become a marketing partner and global adviser to both championships. Continue Reading »

The historic race first-ever World Superbike Championship round in Russia provided plenty of drama with several top riders crashing out of both races and a new leader emerge in the chase for the 2012 WSBK Championship.

Superpole qualifying made for four different manufacturers lining up in the first row of the grid, with Carlos Checa taking pole position for Althea Ducati ahead of Kawasaki‘s Tom Sykes, Aprilia‘s Eugene Laverty and BMW rider Leon Haslam.

A slightly damp and unfamiliar track likely contributed to a number of crashes and collisions. Sykes won the first ever WSBK race in Russia while BMW’s Marco Melandri took Race Two and moved ahead of Aprilia’s Max Biaggi for the championship lead. Continue Reading »