Features 13 Apr 2017

Deadline

Recalling this week in road racing, presented by Alpinestars Australia.

We’re rounding off the week early this week ahead of the Easter long weekend, which has come at a pretty ideal time following a frantic couple of weeks at Foremost Media. We’ll still be working remotely, but for the most part the sites will be in ‘limp mode’.

Easter is generally one of our favourite times of the year, because by now we have the first quarter in the books, and we’re generally tracking along with a decent rhythm at this stage of the season. There’s also a surge in content we have to work with from about now as well.

Teams of the YMF Australian Superbike Championship presented by Motul Pirelli travelled to Winton this week for a two-day test, where Cru Halliday set the pace on both days to carry on the great form he showed there at Winton last year, plus at Wakefield Park last time out.

Image: Alex Gobert (Foremost Media).

What we’re hearing following the test is that tyre degradation will be paramount come the race weekend at the end of this month. A quick lap is one thing, but fresh surfaces are usually a challenge from many perspectives, so we will be following that during round three.

Yamaha Racing Team hasn’t opted to replace Glenn Allerton on the factory YZF-R1M, at least during the test and almost certainly for the race, but we’re yet to follow that up. In other news, Beau Beaton has unfortunately had to take time out due to personal reasons, but hopefully we will see him back aboard his Ducati in due course.

As we previously reported, Josh Hook will ride the 1199 Panigale R in the place of Beaton at Racers Edge Performance/McMartin Racing in the meantime, but he’s over in Europe at the moment with TSR Honda for this weekend’s Le Mans 24 Hours.

There’s a good amount of racing on over the weekend with the Endurance World Championship, British Superbike Championship and Asia Road Racing Championship all on the calendar – complete with a stack of talented Aussies in each!

Source: Supplied.

Aside from that, this week was an interesting one, news-wise, and it kept us busy across the board. Of course, one of the major news articles was the first quarter results of Australian bike sales, which always generates plenty of interest and website traffic.

After such a strong year last year, sales are down across the board, but there are the odd manufacturers that have either increased or remained reasonably steady when you delve deeper into the results provided by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI).

It will definitely be worth keeping tabs on how the sales go between April and June, so we can see what type of trends emerge further into the year. I’ll tell you what though, Husqvarna has been travelling along pretty nicely as it establishes itself alongside KTM.

That’s it from me for this week, thanks for stopping by as usual! Make sure you check out all of CycleOnline.com.au’s social networking channels and be sure to Like us on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for even more behind the scenes insights. Just search CycleOnline.

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