Akrapovic Conference Room Named After Jorge Lorenzo

Jorge Lorenzo's name has been linked forever with that of Slovenian high-performance exhaust manufacturer Akrapovic. At the end of a visit the 2015 MotoGP World Champion paid to Akrapovic, he unveiled a special commemorative plaque and received the honor of having one of the company's conference rooms named after him.
Jorge Lorenzo has been using Akrapovic exhaust technology on his Yamaha motorcycle for quite a long time now and his recent MotoGP crown called for a special celebration.

The occasion was even better because Lorenzo is the hundredth world champion using Akrapovic exhaust systems. The list includes all the motorsports Akrapovic is involved in, with motorcycles, cars and more being added to the roster with each passing year.

Jorge Lorenzo took the factory tour and signed autographs
Lorenzo's visit at the Akrapovic headquarters was a surprise the company prepared for their employees before the end of the year. Also visiting Slovenia for the first time, Jorge Lorenzo was able to see how the Akrapovic exhausts are being developed and manufactured.

Lorenzo is also one of the important figures in Akrapovic's racing history, as he is the first rider to give Akrapovic a world title in MotoGP with his 2012 championship victory, also aboard a Yamaha motorcycle.

Jorge Lorenzo is not new to having things named after him. Back in 2013, the management of the Jerez circuit decided to change the name of the famous final corner from Ducados to Jorge Lorenzo. 

"For me to receive this is so special. Even more than the world championship. A few can win the championship, but there are even less with a corner to their name.

"Jerez was the first 'pro' track where I rode at the age of 10. I also made my debut here in 125cc, eleven years ago. Jerez will always represent something special for me. The first lap I will make tomorrow with my M1 is going to be terrific," Lorenzo declared back then. The ceremony took place on the very day he turned 26.

Jorge Lorenzo 'sure' Casey Stoner will race for Ducati in MotoGP

Yamaha rider Jorge Lorenzo expects dual world champion Casey Stoner to make a handful of MotoGP wildcard appearances with Ducati next year.

Since retiring at the end of 2012, Stoner has worked with Honda as a test rider, but he split with the manufacturer last month to take up a similar role with Ducati.

Scope for the Australian to make wildcard MotoGP starts on a third factory Ducatialongside Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone has been mooted, and it is something 2015 world champion Lorenzo is expecting.

Stoner was keen to stand-in for the injured Dani Pedrosa earlier this year, but Honda opted against it.

"Surely he will be encouraged to run as a wildcard in some races; I think that is their intention," Lorenzo said in a MotoGP.com interview.

"I thought last [season] he would be out in a race, but at the end, due to circumstances, he wasn't.

"He will want to go out on Phillip Island or some other tracks, surely we will see him fighting with us, I think for victory."

Stoner won 38 MotoGP races with Ducati and Honda between 2007 and '12, however his only race since then was the Suzuka 8 Hours in July, in which he was injured in a crash.

Ducati has not won a race since Stoner left the Italian manufacturer at the end of 2010, but Lorenzo feels the 30-year-old would be strong if he returned.

"I have seen very few, if any, riders with the natural talent of Casey, to be fast right away with any bike and in all weather conditions," he said.

"It would be great news for everyone if Casey were to decide to come compete again.

"MotoGP is very difficult, many riders are fighting for victory, but having Casey back would be amazing.

"Hopefully he decides to return."

MotoGP: Jorge Lorenzo blocked from Valentino Rossi appeal

Jorge Lorenzo has been told he cannot take part in MotoGP championship leader Valentino Rossi's Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing into a grid penalty imposed for the season's final race.

Rossi, who leads Lorenzo by seven points, clashed with Honda's reigning champion Marc Marquez, who came off his bike in Malaysia last week.

He was demoted to the back of the grid for Sunday's race in Spain.

Lorenzo asked to participate in the appeal but was denied by Cas.

Nine-time world champion Rossi wants the penalty at least suspended for the race in Valencia, the home track of Yamaha team-mate Lorenzo, 28.

The 36-year-old is expected to learn the outcome no later than Friday.

Lorenzo, who won the most recent of his two titles in 2012, finished second in Malaysia and is the only rider who can deny Rossi the championship.

Rossi must finish second if Lorenzo wins Sunday's race in order to secure the title.

Honda alleged Rossi's actions caused Marquez to crash, highlighting data they said showed his front brake lever received a sudden impact that locked the front tyre, but Yamaha said that was "not proven".

MotoGP British Grand Prix 2015: Valentino Rossi storms to victory and retakes the lead in the Championship standings

Traditional English weather of grey clouds and spitting rain didn’t stop the British making their way to the Northamptonshire circuit as over 73,000 people roared as nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi started from fourth on the grid to then lead from the second lap to the chequered flag of a wet race.

Going into the twelfth round of the championship, Rossi and teammate Jorge Lorenzo led the championship tied on 211 points. After completing the warm-up lap of what was declared a dry race, every rider returned to the pits immediately to change to their wet-tyred bike so incurred a 30-minute delay and the grid was reset.

Although defending world champion Marc Marquez had won pole position yesterday, it was Lorenzo who charged from the front row of the grid to the first corner, leading the first lap with Marquez on his heels. Rossi maintained fourth place but swiftly climbed to second within the first lap before lunging at the Spaniard on the second lap and stealing the lead.

With the rain coming down harder, Lorenzo quickly lost second place to Marquez and the front pair soon pulled away with a seven second gap to the chasing pack. British rider Cal Crutchlow got a great start from eighth place on his LCR Honda, overtaking Bradley Smith and Dani Pedrosa to eventually take third place from Lorenzo.

The Yamaha factory rider immediately hit back as LCR teammate and rookie Jack Miller, who had a magnificent start to climb up to fifth place, went into the corner too deep sending him straight into Crutchlow’s Honda RC213v and finishing his race there. Crutchlow attempted to carry on, entering the pits briefly and returning to the track only to crash a second time and retire to the pits for good.

With Pramac rider Yonny Hernandez being the first to retire by crashing in the first corner, teammate Danilo Petrucci made his way from 18th position on the grid through the pack to battle with the front runners on his satellite Ducati.

Finding himself incredibly in fourth place after the two LCR Honda’s vacated, Petrucci and compatriot Andrea Dovizioso simultaneously swooped on Movistar Yamaha rider Lorenzo on lap seven to then battle for the last podium position. Repsol Honda’s Pedrosa dropped Lorenzo further back by taking fifth place but the Movistar Yamaha rider soon found the pace to re-pass his compatriot.

On lap twelve, second-place Marquez - barely 0.1 seconds behind Rossi - highsided at turn 1, waving his arms in the air clearly having no idea what caused it, but promoted the two Italians behind to secure podium positions. Lorenzo passed Pedrosa for fourth place and began the chase for the two Ducati’s closing the gap to 1.619 secs but unable to challenge for the last spot and valuable championship points, having to settle with fourth place.

With Crutchlow out of the race, Scott Redding and Bradley Smith were left to fight for the British contingent, crossing the line in fifth and sixth places respectively, with fifth being the best result for Redding this season.

In Moto2 Johann Zarco took victory while defending world champion Tito Rabat and fellow Spaniard Alex Rins fought for the other two positions on the podium, with Rins taking second 2.2 seconds ahead. Englishman Sam Lowes fell from the front row of the grid to ninth position but battled with Tomas Luthi and Anthony West to cross the line in seventh place.

In Moto3, leading the championship standings by 45 points going into the British round, Wiltshire born Danny Kent led from the early in the race, taking the win and extending his lead to 50 points.

The next race will take place at Rossi’s home round of Misano in San Marino on Sunday 12 September. BT Sport 2 exclusively broadcasts all the action.

MotoGP Outsider: Silverstone 2015

Silverstone MotoGP 2015 – An Epic Race and One in Which Melling Almost Becomes a Footnote in MotoGP Racing History

Being a professional writer I am, of course, far from shy when it comes to plagiarism. If Shakespeare ripped ideas off from every source he could lay his hands on then literary theft must be acceptable practice for a humble Moto Journalist like me.

In this case I refer to my friend Gordon Howell and the strapline for his company Pole Position Travel: “Nothing Beats Being There.”

There are few occasions in motorcycling history where Gordon’s words were more appropriate than this year’s MotoGP race at Silverstone. Truly, not the best TV coverage in the world could compare with the high drama of this dark, wet afternoon in England.

Marc Marquez contributed to the MotoGP drama at Silverstone by demolishing the lap record in near perfect conditions during Saturday’s qualifying.

The drama began with Saturday’s qualifying which was fascinating. The weather was definitively perfect with conditions bone dry and warm, but not hot.

Marquez was in storming form, only 0.234 seconds over the impossible two minute barrier for the super-fast 3.66-mile circuit.

Boy Wonder set a new lap record, breaking the old time of two minutes and a mere 0.691 seconds which he set back in 2013. However, young Marc was still not a happy racer.

“It was a good qualifying session but when I did the first lap I noticed that if I put together the perfect lap, maybe I could get very close to one minute 59 seconds.

“But I was right on the limit a couple of times, and especially in the last sector I was missing a little something under braking.

“In the end what counts is that we took pole position. You can always improve, but it was a very good lap.”

It certainly was and Marquez looked ultra-comfortable on Silverstone’s high-speed corners.

Lorenzo, another contender for the “Mr. Race Smoothly of the Year” award, was as elegant as ever and only 0.288 seconds behind Marquez whilst Dani Pedrosa was also on the pace in third, half a second slower than his Repsol teammate. Rossi trailed a mammoth 0.713 seconds behind the Pole sitter.

Now a momentary digression. Silverstone is a truly great circuit but it was built on an old WWII airbase and still retains two traits from its heritage. First, it is blisteringly fast. There is no circuit in the world which has so many high speed corners because the course effectively runs round the perimeter of the airfield.

Secondly it is as flat as a pancake and when it rains, water stays on the surface. In heavy rain, which is all too common during English summers, it takes a very special rider to pitch a motorcycle into a corner at 175 mph – a very, very special rider indeed.

If Saturday qualifying was blessed with the most benign weather, you could taste the nascent rain in the air from first thing on Sunday morning.

Moto 2 ran in the dry but the sky darkened like the prelude to Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” as the MotoGP grid formed. To the west, we expected to see the Valkyries ride in through the ever-blackening clouds.

Race Control declared the race to be dry, which it was as the crews left the grid – but only barely so. As the wall of MotoGP noise cascaded down into the grandstands, it was carried on a cloud of ever denser rain.

As the weather turned just prior to the MotoGP race, drama intensified as the entire grid came back to the pits for machines prepped for the wet tarmac.

This was high drama and truly nothing did beat being there.

After the formation lap, rider after rider streamed into the pit lane to change bikes from dry to wet set-up. One lap had convinced the whole field, even those who normally would have no hope of a decent result and might therefore be willing to take a chance on tires, that it would have been suicide to venture out on slicks.

Now, the whole field was in pit lane and the starting lights were on. If just one rider had gone on to the grid then the race would have had to be started and the whole of pit lane would have been a chaotic, not to say extremely dangerous, melee as riders began the race from outside their garages.

Fortunately, no one broke ranks and so Race Direction made the good call to restart the whole race and declare it “Wet” from the outset. As the rain increased in intensity there was a collective sigh of relief that at least every rider would have the protection of full wet tires.

When the red lights did go out, the rain was now marching down the track in grey sheets and this would be a race decided not only by being the bravest of the brave but the winner would have to demonstrate motorcycle racers’ art at the highest level. This MotoGP race could only be won with finesse, discipline and delicacy.

Jorge Lorenzo, arguably the most balletic of all the GP riders, led but could not maintain his advantage in conditions which were becoming more horrendous by the minute. He blamed misting of his HJC helmet – allegedly the second time that this has happened in 2015.

Rossi is the master of pressure and, despite the conditions, eased past Lorenzo as did Marquez. Could the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) hold off the most talented rider of the current generation? It had fans on the edge of their seats.

Valentino Rossi getting ahead of his primary title rival in 2015, teammate Jorge Lorenzo, at Silverstone.

This being Silverstone, Cal Crutchlow had to walk on to center stage. He passed Lorenzo for third position and of course the partisan crowd went crazy. Crutchlow, he of the truly ginormous cojones, in front of his home crowd, riding in the wet. We weren’t quite seeing Cal on the podium spraying champagne – but the vision was there.

Then, Crutchlow was in the gravel – taken out by his 20-year-old team mate Jack Miller. Cal is a seriously bad loser and so his reaction was surprisingly generous. He said: “I wasn’t angry with Jack though – it was a racing incident and I’ve done it before and I’m sure I’ll do it again. I was more angry at Aleix [Espargaro] when he did it to me than I was with Jack, even though I felt like I could have got a good result today.

“It’s easy to say, but I had a great feeling when I got taken out, and I had a great feeling on the bike this morning.

“Feeling that good is a rarity, but there are some races where you feel untouchable, and that was one of them. At the time, I was cruising around wondering why they were going so slow, even though we were all right at the limit. I felt like I had a little in the tank and thought that I could have gone with the other guys – and that was always the plan.”

Knowing Cal, this was an amazingly relaxed reaction. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to be reading that Crutchlow was about to appear in court on a “Grievous Bodily Harm” charge so the Australian rookie really has got off lightly – even if Race Control gave him a one point penalty.

LCR team owner Lucio Cecchinello was less forgiving to the young Australian and “spoke to him…” – and you can be sure that they weren’t discussing the quality of champagne supplied to the podium by Dorna.

Disaster looming for LCR Honda’s Cal Crutchlow and Jack Miller.

Meanwhile, Danilo Petrucci was having a fabulous ride on the Pramac Ducati. Danilo is an ex-motocross rider of some considerable quality and likes riding in the wet. As he chased down Marquez and Lorenzo, the impossible began to have a glimmer of credibility. A satellite rider on a Ducati winning MotoGP? Surely not.

In fact, the hot money was all on Marquez. Mile after mile he stalked Rossi. We were all waiting for the last four laps when Marc eased past and went on to win. Except he didn’t. With eight laps left, Marc got a tiny bit too much power to the rear wheel and down he went.

Meanwhile Rossi continued like a racing automaton. For the fans, it would have been a better spectacle to see him and Marc battling it out all the way to the line but for the purist, there could be nothing finer to than to watch a master of the art of motorcycle racing at his very best.

Even in this field of Moto Gods, none were as methodical and delicate as Rossi. He placed his Yamaha on precisely the same line, lap after lap after lap, and braked and accelerated with the same nano particle accuracy.

Elegant, disciplined and, as it appeared from the outside, effortless, I would have walked the 150 miles from our house to Silverstone and stood unprotected in the torrential rain to see such a demonstration of the motorcycle racer’s skill. Truly, nothing could beat being there.

The methodical and delicate Moto God Valentino Rossi celebrates a well-earned win at Silverstone.

Half the grandstands emptied after MotoGP which was a shame because there was a second demonstration of high art in motorcycle racing in the Moto3 race. Every year, some up and coming rider is tipped as the next Rossi, Marquez or whatever and they rarely live up to their hype. Perhaps Danny Kent is different.

The 21-year-old Englishman now leads the Moto3 Championship by a not inconsiderable 70 points and the way he won at Silverstone, with metronomic competence, had very strong Rossi overtones. There was no drama or heroics, simply lap after lap of ruthless efficiency giving an eight-second cushion at the end of the race.

It was a very impressive performance and explains why he has had offers to skip Moto2 and go straight to MotoGP for 2016. Added to his ability on the bike, Danny is polite, articulate, PR savvy and hard working. MotoGP podiums are a long way distant but I do think that he is a rider to watch.

Danny Kent emphasized the fact that he’s a rider to watch after a masterful performance in Moto3.

And now we come to the most important part of the whole weekend – how MotoUSA’s fat, bald, old wrinkly avoided embarrassment which would have been so life destroyingly shameful that ritual suicide on Silverstone’s starting grid would not have expunged the stigma.

The Circuit of Wales, the rights holder of the British round of MotoGP but who, somewhat confusingly, are holding the event at Silverstone until their track is built, organized a parade of classic GP bikes on the Saturday evening before Sunday’s racing. I was lucky enough to be invited to ride in this.

Our Seeley was on its best behavior and I set off with a happy heart behind the pace car. Everything was going wonderfully and I was enjoying every inch of Silverstone’s 3.66 miles of immaculate tarmac.

Melling’s life is about to get very exciting…

Then I eased the bike into the right hander at the end of the F1 Pits’ Straight and got into the Mummy and Daddy of all slides. It’s not only Danilo Petrucci who was grateful for skills which come from being an off-road racer. I used to be a half decent enduro rider and so caught the full lock slide and stayed, only just, in the saddle. Trying to work out what had happened I looked down and, to my horror, saw that the right hand expansion chamber was dragging on the ground. Our lovely, atomic clock reliable Seeley had chosen this time, and this place, to fracture an exhaust bracket.

To be honest, I took Cal’s attitude. Yes, I was mortified that the exhaust had broken but so grateful that the wonderful Seeley chassis had let me save the slide and ride back to the paddock intact. Truly, nothing does beat being there!

My thanks to Silverstone and Pole Position for their hospitality and for getting us a pair of the best seats at the circuit.

Bolivia: how many more dead women are needed for us to change?

With cases of women killed piling up, Bolivian society finds itself at a crucial turning point: to change and leave aside its pernicious ways, or to turn a blind eye and consider Andrea yet another victim, yet another statistical datum of femicide.Português.

All rights reserved.

¿Do you remember Sophia Calvo Aponte? Possibly, your answer is no. Certainly her family does, and keeps her memory alive. It was Sophia who, in August 2014, assembled approximately 4.000 people in the atrium of the San Lorenzo cathedral in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in demand of peace.

Sophia Calvo Aponte was another victim of feminicidio (femicide). Her loss prompted a huge rally in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, attended by civil society and the media. And yet, within a few months, she was all but forgotten, falling into oblivion along with many other women who have gone through a similar horrific fate.

To the media, many if not all of these women cease to be human beings and become simple statistical facts handled by police units devoted to fight violence. Paraphrasing Eduardo Galeano, they are "women who are not listed in world history, but in the crime reports of the local press.”

Now Andrea Aramayo Álvarez is, unfortunately, yet another victim of a society that does not want to question - and does not care about – the data of a woman who got killed. La Paz is now the city dressed in black, in mourning and anger. Andrea, Sophia, these are only names in a long list of women whose dreams were ended abruptly by some macho who did not think about the consequences of his actions.

Probably, many of these macho-men enjoy impunity within the Bolivian judicial system, well-known for its slowness and purchasable nature by the highest bidder. The attackers, the murderers, those who are still at large undeterred by their criminal actions, are walking the streets at the moment, as if nothing had happened. Andrea's case shows that the social status of the aggressor does not really matter, and sheds light on the self-indulgent Bolivian elites and their demeanour.

William Kushner Dávalos, known to be a member of a first-class and affluent family from La Paz, is responsible for the brutal killing of Andrea Aramayo Álvarez. In all probability his action took by surprise most of the city’s population, as they could not think of a member of the Kushners, one of the few elite families in Bolivian society, to become e a killer.

Back in 1930, however, writer Carlos Medinaceli claimed that those who define themselves as Bolivian upper class are "un-aristocratic", and show only "cocky love for luxury and comfort, and a peasant vanity”. Philosopher H.C.F. Mansilla also describes “our elites, the members of which are often rubes who got rich all of a sudden, unrefined and vain, mercilessly clumsy, and who have let it go to their heads and left it there. You have to see the contempt with which they treat their subordinates (they are feared by their secretaries and their domestic service) and how they humble themselves before those who are more powerful than them."

With cases of women killed piling up, Bolivian society finds itself at a crucial turning point: to change and leave aside its pernicious ways, or to turn a blind eye and consider Andrea yet another victim, yet another statistical datum of femicide.

Published for the first time in Asuntos del Sur.

MotoGP Misano: Lorenzo up for fight in San Marino

'Valentino will feel good because it's his home Grand Prix, but in the past I've always been quite fast there and achieved several victories, so let's see what happens' - Jorge Lorenzo.



Jorge Lorenzo is unfazed by the prospect of taking on team-mate Valentino Rossi on home soil this weekend at Misano. 

Lorenzo lost ground in the title race at Silverstone, finishing fourth in the wet as Rossi bagged all 25 points after the Movistar Yamaha team-mates had arrived in the UK level on points at the top of the championship. 

It was a blow to Lorenzo's title prospects, but the Majorcan is ready to regroup and points out that although Rossi is a formidable force at Misano, his own record stands up to scrutiny, with Lorenzo claiming three straight premier class wins from 2011 to 2013 and finishing as the runner-up in 2008, 2009, 2010 and last year. 

“Silverstone didn't go as we expected due to the weather conditions. We tried all we could to stay on the podium but unfortunately we couldn't get the pace to stay in front and finally we had some problems beyond our control, prohibiting us to keep up the fight until the end as well,” said Lorenzo. 

“Now I'm focused on the race at Misano because it's a special track for us and for Yamaha. I know Valentino will feel good because it's his home Grand Prix, but in the past I've always been quite fast there and achieved several victories, so let's see what happens. 

“My team-mate has a gap of 12 points in the championship but there are still six races left so there are still enough points up for grabs,” he added. 

“I'm going to push to the maximum in every race starting in Misano.” 

Brad Pitt narrates MotoGP documentary on Spain’s Marc Marquez and Jorge Lorenzo

US megastar Brad Pitt is part of a documentary tracking the careers of the world’s fastest drivers.

The MotoGP superfan will be producing and narrating Hitting the Apex.

Tracing the stories of ‘six of the fastest men of all time’, Pitt takes a look at the rivalry between Italian Valentino Rossi and Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo and the meteoric rise of young Spaniard Marc Marquez.

But Pitt is not the first Hollywood star to transfer his love of motorbikes to the big screen.

Scottish A-lister Ewan McGregor is the voice to both Faster and Fastest MotoGPdocumentaries.