MOTOGP

I didn’t know anything about the H2 until the dealer meeting in 2012 when the Kawasaki president came up to me and said he’d like me to come to Japan and give him my opinion on a project. I was flattered. I didn’t hear from him until November of 2013. So, on Thanksgiving Day 2013, while everyone was eating their dinner here in the States, my mechanic Coby Adams and I got to see two clay models of the Kawasaki H2. I had heard rumors of a supercharged engine before I got to Japan. But I didn’t believe them. When I saw that it really was a supercharged motorcycle, I was excited beyond belief. It was a complete collaboration of all things KHI. They took it very seriously. They wanted to know what it would take for me to adapt this bike for drag racing. Of course, I knew they were building the H2 to be an all-around bike, not a drag racer. But I also knew that because the H2 was supercharged, it wasn’t a roadracing bike. The same day I saw the clay model, they show...

Rules are rules when it comes to racing, but Yamaha ’s new YZF-R1 – the star of EICMA 2014 for some of us – doesn’t have to follow any of them. Things get coy when you ask how much horsepower a factory Superbike makes, and Yamaha USA doesn’t even care to divulge horsepower numbers for an off-the-shelf R1. Its European counterparts, though, make no bones about it: 200 PS, they say, which is about 197 crankshaft horsepower in a 439-pound package that looks a lot like the one Vale rides. Wherever you look, the new bike’s numbers seem designed to run with the BMW S1000RR and Ducati Panigale , and to lay waste to the other Open-class sportbikes that have had their way with the old R1 for too many years in media comparisons, at least. Here are ten reasons for them to fear the new R1, and areas where it even outshines last year’s AMA American Superbike (may it rest in peace). Josh Hayes ’ four-time AMA Championship-winning R1 must make do with the steel connecting rods i...