Motorcycle Video News – 14 February 2018

On today’s motorcycle video news we’ve got World Superbikes at Phillip Island, new machines from Polaris and a video tribute to Daymon Stokie.

If you’d rather read than watch…

The Superbikes are coming to town, and I don’t just mean the Superbike World Championship round at Phillip Island February 22-25, but the local Superbike racers, too.

The Australian Superbike Championship’s opening round being held in conjunction with the World Championship has attracted 50 entries, which is the highest recorded since computers were used to record such things.

Of course the headline act in the Aussie Supers in Troy Bayliss, the three-time World Championship winner who hasn’t won an Aussie title. There are bumper grids across all classes, with the weekend featuring Supersport, Supersport 300 and Yamaha R3 Cup events in addition to the World and domestic Superbike races.

Overall there will be 15 races over the weekend.

Bayliss, riding a Ducati, has been recording some decent lap times in testing but will have his hands full trying to beat current champion Suzuki’s Josh Waters, Yamaha’s Wayne Maxwell and Daniel Falzon, Penrite Honda’s Troy Herfoss, Bryan Staring on the BCperformance Kawasaki, Glenn Allerton on the NextGen BMW and Mike Jones riding the Allsite Kawasaki.

There’s a gaggle of young stars all trying to make a mark for themselves too, and one really interesting entry: former Moto3 front-runner Arthur Sissis, riding a Suzuki.

If you haven’t had a chance to see one of the most successful riders in world Superbike history, Jonathon Rea, in action, you’ve done yourself a disservice – incredible fast, smooth and clinical in his riding, Rea and his ZX-10R have been incredible in the last few years.

Of course there are many talented riders out to spoil Rea’s party, incuding his team-mate Tom Sykes, Ducati’s Chaz Davies and Yamaha’s Alex Lowes.

And this will be the last time you’ll be able to hear the throb of Ducati twins in World Superbike, the V4 Panigale taking over from the big V-twins later this year as the race bikes are readied for action.

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Polaris has announced a couple of new ATVs, the Sportsman and UTE 570s, and a new Ranger XP 1000 side-by side. If you’re a farmer and think I should talk more about agricultural bikes, ATVs and side-by-sides, let me know in the comments.

Daymon Stokie died on January 27, the racer suffering fatal injuries after crashing in an off road race. Stokie was a legend of the desert racing scene, capturing Yamaha’s first win in decades at the Finke Desert Race in 2017, but that was just the most famous of Stokie’s results.

Motorcycle video production company 6HD has been making bike videos for ten years and they recently put together an awesome video about Stokie.