2003
Triumph Daytona 600
Albacete, Spain
April 6, 2003
Typical Spanish road pace.
First it was a couple of phone calls from friends, then a few emails from acquaintances and then a deluge from strangers. The approach differed, the wording varied, the sentiment was the same.
“Which middleweight should I buy?”
This question is usually answered by magazines in the same way that firing squad executions are carried out. If a group of people take part in an activity it is harder to figure out whose bullet was the one that actually killed the condemned that way manufacturer’s ire can be spread over a group of people not directly at a single editor.
In our comparisons for Roadracing World we like to convert the variables of OEM tires and weather to constants of standard race tire fitment and running the bikes on a single track on a single day.
Mugello, Italy 2003
RW editors Sam Fleming and Melissa Berkoff were sent to Mugello Italy to report on the off track events of the MotoGP. In between rescuing stranded 250 team members, borrowing scooters and, eventually, escaping from the track through a partially completed railroad tunnel, they submitted the following information.
Honda CBR-600RR
Las Vegas Speedway
January 22, 2003
We all witnessed the RC211V simply annihilate the rest of the field in MotoGP. In some sort of undocumented physical law of racing, such engineering feats do not come cheap. Honda spent a fortune to win race after race with the RC211V.
Despite how the MotoGP grids might appear next year, the RC211V is not a mass production bike. Honda is not going to make back their investment on the RC211V by selling more RC211s, they are going to make it back by selling their usual line of street bikes.
Inside Aprilia
Photos and Words by Sam Quarelli Fleming
In 1999 Aprilia split its core operations into two locations in Northern Italy. A new assembly plant was opened in Scorze while the design, race, corporate and testing facilities took over the original headquarters a few miles away in Noale. Part I of this pictorial depicts the Scorze assembly plant, part II explores the Noale facility. Neither of these locations have tours for visitors yet so, for the meantime, these pictures will have to suffice.
