#Aprilia

Rejoice, sportbike fans, as 2015 is bound to go down as the year of the liter-class superbike. After riding this latest crop of superbikes at their individual intros, your respective MO editors all came back gushing, proclaiming the bike they just finished riding is a viable contender for top honors in the class. Of course, with statements like that, pitting them all together and settling the score was the natural thing to do. And here for you now, we bring you the epic showdown you’ve long been waiting for, pitting five all-new or significantly revised superbikes on the racetrack against the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R, winner of our 2012 Japanese Literbike Shootout. Stay tuned next week for our street impressions.

Fausto Gresini has been in a difficult spot for most of his 28 years in command of grand prix motorcycle racing teams, generally burning breathtaking sums of his own money and money he has personally raised from sponsors. As a rider himself in the 1980s, Gresini won two world titles in the 125cc class. As an owner, his teams have included a kaleidoscope of title sponsors and have won titles in the 250cc and Moto2 classes. In 2015, the Italian helms Aprilia’s re-entry into the MotoGP class with riders Alvaro Bautista and Marco Melandri.

MotoGP brings its act from the bucolic French countryside to the hills of Tuscany as Round 6 of the 2015 season arrives. Within the top tranche of the premier class food chain, the standings are scrambled, while the rest of the top ten reside pretty much where we expected heading into the year. Team Yamaha has been hot of late, and this trend could continue in Italy unless Repsol Honda double defending world champion Marc Marquez gets himself together. Right now would be a good time to do so.

On a picture-perfect afternoon in the French countryside, Movistar Yamaha bruise brothers Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi delivered a clear message to the grid, notably Repsol Honda upstart Marc Marquez: anyone even hallucinating about a world championship in 2015 will need to go through them. Lorenzo, in a replay of his win in Jerez last time out, took the early lead and was never challenged on the way to his 35th career victory in MotoGP. Rossi had to slice his way through several Ducati GP15s to secure his ninth podium in a row and 13th out of 14 dating back to last year. Meanwhile, it was another forgettable Sunday for Repsol Honda.

My affection for the Tuono V4 is well documented on the pages of MO, and I’ll jump at any chance to take one for a ride on a twisty road. If the ride is in Italy on an upgraded and faster version, well, step aside.

“Chock full of bland mediocrity” was the original subhead for my second ride review of the 2015 Suzuki GSX-S750. It was a subhead EiC, Kevin Duke, rightly removed. I was a little harsh on the new Gixxus, and now in a group of its peers, the naked bike from Suzuki has proven itself to be quite the contender. Out of the three testers involved in this shootout, John “run-on sentence” Burns and Troy “I’ve ridden the new R1 more than you” Siahaan, it is I who is championing the GSX-S.

This year marks the debuts of several remarkable new motorcycles tugging hard at the moto spotlight, and the most intense category is the literbike supersport/superbike category. BMW’s class-leading S1000RR has been updated and tested here. Yamaha offers a ground-up re-do of its R1 tested here, and it comes equipped with perhaps the most advanced electronic rider aids of any company. And let’s not forget Ducati’s awesome 205-horse 1299 Panigale tested here, nor the outrageous supercharged Kawasaki H2 tested here!

I was on a GSX-R600 the last time I was at Misano, and the world-renowned Italian racetrack seemed quite lengthy, with several long straights to stretch throttle cables for extended durations. Aboard Aprilia‘s new and more powerful RSV4, the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli seemed like an overgrown go-kart track.

For the second year in a row, The Grand Prix of Qatar delivered a riveting race with unexpected results. The 2014 edition saw putative race favorite Jorge Lorenzo dump his Yamaha M1 on the first lap, paving the way for a cage match between teammate Valentino Rossi and defending Repsol Honda world champion Marc Marquez in which Marquez prevailed by a quarter second. A year later, it was the favorite Marquez going walkabout on Lap 1, setting up a night-long rumble between the factory Yamahas and the factory Ducatis (what?) in which Rossi eventually pipped Andrea Dovizioso at the flag.

All of the story lines leading up to the 2015 MotoGP season boil down to one: who has the stones, and the bike, and the team, and the vision to take the title away from Marc Marquez? Is it only Marquez himself, some suddenly reckless version way different from the 2013 and 2014 champion, who crashes early and often and digs himself a hole that Jorge Lorenzo or Valentino Rossi or maybe Dani Pedrosa or possibly one of the Andreas from the factory Ducati team rushes to fill…

For this week’s video, we decided to do a public service announcement for all of our readers with young children. Toddlers are curious creatures, and parents have to be especially careful about letting them around small items that they may put into their mouths and try to swallow. Or perhaps use to damage an expensive motorcyle.

The Aprilia Caponord Rally is the most high-tech road motorcycle in Aprilia’s range, a touring flagship fit with everything from active suspension to traction control. What separates the Rally from the standard Caponord is the extra versatility of having standard large and sturdy panniers (33 litres each), spoked wheels enabling off road tires, a taller windscreen, front fairing crash protection and extra LED lights. Still, dynamic damping is the highlight.

The 2015 Aprilia Caponord Rally sails through as the Noale firm’s flagship touring and adventure bike. The Rally is high-tech where the absolute highlight is the ADD (Aprilia Dynamic Damping), which makes any ride, fast or slow, comfortable and safe. Traction control, sophisticated ABS brakes and smoother ride-by-wire throttle response are other highlights which make the Caponord Rally a treat to ride.

There’s a lot of hype surrounding the 2015 model year. With so many new models coming from almost every manufacturer, it’s hard not to be excited. And of all those new models slated to arrive within the coming months, this week’s Top 10 lists the ones your MO crew are most anxious to ride.

If you’re like us, then you must be salivating over the 2015 literbike prospects. With no less than eight new bleeding-edge sportbikes on the table from both European and Japanese marques, the bar is being raised in the quest for track domination or, in the case of the Kawasaki H2 and H2R, simply having the rider experience intense acceleration like they’ve never felt before. However, there’s an interesting trend in the method in which each manufacturer is going about upping the literbike ante. More and more, a greater emphasis is placed on technology and electronics rather than hardware. Sure, hardware isn’t being ignored, but with today’s bikes making so much power, being able to harness it effectively is of utmost importance.