Photo by Mark Wernham

Reactions were varied to the cancellation of Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix. The riders knew immediately that Marco Simoncelli’s condition was grave; some even changed out of their leathers and into street clothes shortly after returning to the garages. Most of the record 67,112 spectators ringing the 3.447-mile Sepang International Circuit, however, were apparently unaware of the critical nature of the second-lap accident.

According to eyewitnesses, some fans were actually angry. They’d paid a premium for their tickets and felt shortchanged. They threw bottles of water and trash onto the racetrack, and in the accompany photo, track marshals can clearly be seen running for cover. By the time Simoncelli had been pronounced dead, most of the crowd had gone home.

(more…)

Since July, 2010, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has evidently made a point of being seen with Russian biker buddies. Nicknamed “Abaddon” (one meaning is “destroyer” in Hebrew) when he was inducted into a biker club by the “high council of Russian bikers movements,” Putin publicly rides a Harley-Davidson Lehman Trike with his fellow club members in the “Night Wolves.” He rides helmetless, at least for the photo-ops.

This year, at the opening of a motorcycle show in the Ukraine, according to the website RiaNovosti, Putin said of motorcycles that, “Bike is the most democratic transport vehicle. Bike is the most-daring, challenging as it gives its owner the tempting feeling of freedom, that is why one can say without any exaggeration, bike is a symbol of freedom.”

(more…)

Periodically, I stumble across a statistic that bowls me over, changes the way I think and feel. Earlier this week, I sat over lunch, looking at a recent issue of Diesel Facts, a publication of the German MAN company, which makes diesel engines.

The statistic was in an article about 40,000-horsepower MAN two-stroke marine engines being specified for giant new 400,000-ton bulk carrier ships. The sentence that got me said that 19 such ships “will transport iron ore from South American mines to the Chinese steelworks that currently take 60 percent of all iron ore mined globally.”

(more…)

Suspension engineer Jim Lindemann has died after many years of successfully fighting brain cancer. Jim was for 25 years a familiar face on the AMA roadracing circuit and could sometimes be seen with a wire loop around his neck, onto which he had threaded the washer stack of a suspension unit he was servicing at the moment. It kept everything in sequence!

Like the roll of duct tape often kept handy on the wrists of mechanics on the starting grid, that wire loop also proclaimed his profession. Jim helped a great many riders over the years and not only by his knowledge of suspension. He always seemed pleasantly taken by surprise by life, and that optimistic outlook was contagious. Racers need the company of optimists.

We will miss Jim’s presence.

(more…)