Sylvain Guintoli: I'm like wine, I get better with time

Sylvain Guintoli will have the tough job of replacing Max Biaggi in Aprilia’s superbike team this season, but the French rider is ready to take on the task and try to defend the heritage that Biaggi left behind at the end of 2012: both riders and manufacturers titles.

Interviewed at the Aprilia’s 2013 WSBK team launch in Milan, the 30-year-old Guintoli was asked several questions by one of the guys from Motoblog.it and here are some of the Q&A:

Sylvain how does it feel to be back with Aprilia? (he rode an Aprilia in the 250cc class from 2001 to 2006)

“It’s an honour to ride the world championship bike, this is the most important occasion in my racing career. A lot of people have asked me if I’m under a lot of pressure, but the fact that I want to do well and prove my worth in the World Superbikes is far greater than any pressure. I’m very happy to ride the RSV4 in maybe what is my best season. I’m a rider with experience although I’m still young. I think that this chance comes at the best time for me, I think I’m like a good French wine, the more time passes the more I improve. And finally it is time to drink this wine.

Talking about improving with age … Max Biaggi rode until he was 40
That was a great wine!

How is the RSV4?

What surprised me most about the RSV4 is that it felt immediately natural to ride. Straightaway I felt “at home”, despite having ridden bikes with very different features in the past. The RSV4 is fast, but more important it offers all the adjustments to enable it to be adapted to my riding style. This bike is truly amazing to ride, as well as the team that is behind it. More importantly I think the fact that riding the Aprilia makes you smile. I think that in Australia it will already give me great satisfaction.

How’s your feel with the team?

I’m pleased regarding the great confidence between me and the Aprilia team: each team member knows what to do without even needing to speak. For a rider it’s reassuring to see efficiency and competence in the garage, and it allows you to focus your attention on riding. Aligi is a crewchief that’s able to “translate” into technical changes every my single sensation. Working with this team I can see why they’ve won so much!

Goals for 2013?

Making predictions is difficult, and I say this because of last season, where the championship was decided in the last race by just a half point. I aim to do well in 2013 and last year I won three races, and my first goal is to beat this personal record.

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dehors il neige !

HARLEY SPORTSTER BY ASTERISK

By David Edwards—There may be better cures for jetlag…then again, maybe not. Hideki Hoshikawa had flown over from Japan with his latest build in the airplane’s cargo bay, clearing customs in Los Angeles just in time for the big L.A. Calendar Bike Show, where the Sportster-based “Avanzare” nabbed Best of Show honors and the AFT Visionary award. Next day, the bike was in the photo studio for a calendar shoot, with two leggy bikini models draped all over it. Hoshikawa was tired but hardly complaining.

Since 2004 Hoshikawa, 37, has run Asterisk Custom Cycles, a small three-person operation in northern Japan specializing in bare-bones Shovelhead-powered specials. When a customer came in requesting a traditionally styled Evo Sportster café racer, Hoshikawa convinced the client to step things up several notches. “I was not interesting in mimicking an old café racer,” he says, “I wanted to produce a modern café racer.”

Mission more than accomplished—in fact, I’d rank Avanzare (Italian for “progress”) as easily the most impressive custom I’ve seen in the past year. First order of business was to bring frame geometry and suspension up to current standards. Off came the steel twin-shock swingarm, replaced with a braced aluminum monoshock job inspired by Honda’s NSR500 Grand Prix racer. Öhlins supplied the damper and the inverted fork, the latter grasped by a custom billet triple-clamp, one of the project’s few parts not crafted in-house. All done, rake was tightened up from the stocker’s lazy 29 degrees to a much more sporting 24.

Hoshikawa broke out the aluminum tubing and fired up his welder again to create the rear subframe, which serves as a mounting point for the alloy tailsection, the dirtbike-style Pro Circuit muffler and a small catch tank for the top-end oil breathers. The main oil supply is housed in an Asterisk-built aluminum chin spoiler, its down-low location freeing up space amidships which allowed the wasp-waisted look Hoshikawa was after. The artfully arching fuel tank is steel, so severely pinched at the rear that it is barely wider than the frame’s backbone.

About 100 horses make their way through Hoshikawa’s snaky 2-into-1 stainless-steel exhaust system, a masterwork of bends and welds. This is a showbike that also knows how to go—thankfully a combination we’re seeing more of these days.

I ask Hoshikawa if there’s anything he would do differently on Avanzare. Except for a rethink of the tiny, lightweight battery that has given problems, he can’t come up with a thing. Me neither.

For more on Avanzare and builder Hideki Hoshikawa, check out the cover story in the new issue ofBikeCraft magazine, on newsstands later this month. Visit BikeCraft’s Facebook page for additional story previews.

Photography by Vibe Magazine.

from BIKEEXIF