WSBK : Sykes vainqueur incontesté de la première course en Aragón

Sous le soleil espagnol, le MotorLand Aragón a vu triompher un Tom Sykes (Kawasaki Racing Team) dominateur, qui a au passage battu son propre record du tour et laissé son coéquipier Loris Baz, second, à plus de quatre secondes.

Auteur du meilleur départ, le Champion en titre s'est échappé dès les premiers tours tandis que Loris Baz (Kawasaki Racing Team) était aux prises avec Davide Giugliano (Ducati Superbike Team), dont il n'a pu se débarrasser qu'à mi-course. L'infortuné pilote italien s'est vu disputer la troisième place par Jonathan Rea (Pata Honda World Superbike Team) et a fini par chuter en touchant le carénage du Britannique, qui retrouvait le podium, à deux virages de l’arrivée. Giugliano termine finalement huitième.

Au pied du podium après plusieurs dépassements spectaculaires, Chaz Davies (Ducati Superbike Team) a fait une superbe course et a pris le meilleur sur Eugene Laverty (Voltcom Crescent Suzuki) et le Français Sylvain Guintoli (Aprilia Racing Team), qui, suite à un départ peu convaincant, a pris la sixième place. Pour sa première course en Europe, Alex Lowes (Voltcom Crescent Suzuki) s'octroie une remarquable dixième position devant un certain Marco Melandri (Aprilia Racing Team). Toni Elías (Red Devils Roma) et Leon Haslam (Pata Honda World Superbike) prennent les septième et neuvième places.

En catégorie EVO, Leon Camier (BMW Motorrad Italia) s’est illustré pour sa première course en tant que remplaçant de Sylvain Barrier et a fini douzième, devant David Salom (Kawasaki Racing Team) et le très bon Jérémy Guarnoni (MRS Kawasaki), qui prend donc les deux points de la quatorzième place. Suite à un problème technique, le malheureux Niccolò Canepa (Althea Racing), rapide tout le week-end, a été forcé d'abandonner, tout comme Fabien Foret (Mahi Racing Team India).

En attendant la deuxième course de la journée, Guintoli et Baz mènent conjointement le classement général, avec tout juste un point d’avance sur Sykes.

Paper Dreams - a story by David Betteridge

56 MOTO C50

It’s not often that ‘peds get featured in the shed, but some have a place; after all, we ‘re all about bikes, customising and going your own way. This is Toms ride; he’s the main man at 56 Motorcycles, a young Parisian garage based in the centre of Paris.

There’s a sensibility with scooters, but this one has had a little madness thrown its way, which isn’t a huge surprise when you realise Tom isn’t pure French; he’s part Ozzy… now it all makes sense!

Tom has been a fan of small capacity Honda’s for nearly 3 decades and had his fair share of horizontal engined mini bikes, but with a mini bike, you get mini wheels; Tom fancied a big wheel bike; you know… like a grown up.

This is where Tom fits into our category, he tells us that he hates the stock look of a bike and always feels the need to customise. When your donor bike is a C50 though, there’s not much there to start with and you can’t go bolting bits on…. the 49cc’s need a fighting chance. So Tom set about stripping her down, he ditched the fairing and the ‘sofa’ comfy seat, as well as the original lights, bars and instruments.

Once down to the bare bones the ‘ped received a lovely retro tone paint job, an engine clean up and paint, along with a few choice upgrades, mainly a beefier set of rear shocks and a Keihn Carburettor with pod filter.

The Original seat has been replaced with a little pancake pad with cross stitching and a hole for access to the fuel cap; handlebars look purposeful and are from a downhill mountain bike, they have grips and a throttle attached to them… that’s right; no switches here, not even a front brake, so we don’t need to ask if it does skids, I think they were a large part of its design!

A hot-rod style headlamp protrudes ahead of the original C50 number plaque, the rear gets a micro tail light attached to one of the shocks, whilst the license plate is located on the opposite side. The rear fender has been shortened, this gives better clearance for all the mud to ping out and off of those knobbly tyres, after all we’re sure Tom will spend most of his time hacking around the woods on this little BMX’d ‘ped, probably doing skids and jumps like all the cool kids.

Thanks for sharing Tom, we look forward to seeing more light weight, light hearted and fun filled bikes from 56 Moto’s. To keep a track on what the guys are doing, check out their Facebook page.

Photos are by the talented David Marvier.

1988 Parkfield Offroad event.