...apparently Maverick Vinales is kicking everyone's asses!

Last year people got a bit disappointed with the Yamaha team's results, Jorge Lorenzo was a lady on the motorbike (specially on the rain), he was unable to comply as a team member up to the end of the season when he got an offer to move to Ducati, meanwhile the Spanish kind of got together to eliminate Rossi from the podiums, that was really bad fair play and Rossi has come over it, after the prvious season drama with Marquez last year was time to get it going with Lorenzo, anyway they finally will become opponents without being on the same team, so now we will see what Jorge can do with a Ducati without Winglets ;).

On the other side, Rossi also makes a big fuzz out of small things and has lost focus in some of the last year races, fear not as Maverick is serving as an inspiration, someone who gives a real fair competition to Rossi and that can already be seen on the tests done earlier this year where Vinales has completely destroyed records and left Veterans with a lockjaw.

Me being a Yamaha die hard fan, I couldn't be more excited for this season, some of the things I am awaiting to see:

hopefully Marquez will be put into his place and mature a bit (we have seen this happening a bit during this season),
hopefully Pedrosa will be able to show what he can do without breaking a colar bone,
hopefully Ianonne and Dovizioso won't crash their bikes against other riders
hopefully Suzuki will be able to show what they can do without Maverick,
hopefully the KTM motorcycle will be competitive enough to come up in the position,
hopefully we will see more of Carl Crutchlow in Podium.


but most important of all , hopefully everyone will step up including Rossi with this stepping up beeing, catching up to the missile Maverick Vinales in its amazing Form and Record debunk-er style!

The last tests in Philip Island:

Maverick Vinales ended day two of Phillip Island MotoGP testing nearly half a second clear of the field for Yamaha, thanks to a stunning three-lap burst in the first hour.

Jorge Lorenzo's replacement put together a blinding stint to string together three sub-1m29s laps in a row, doing a 1m28.896s, then 1m28.927s, and then 1m28.847s.

While all three laps would have been more than enough to leave Vinales on top of the times at the end of the day, he still came out right at the end of the session and posted another two sub-29 laps - a 1m28.888s and a 1m28.863s.

It was the third lap of that early stint that wound up being the benchmark time, Vinales sitting 0.462s clear of the field heading into the evening.

Wednesday's pacesetter Marc Marquez finished up second, despite finding more than a tenth overnight.

The Honda rider set his 1m29.309s at almost exactly the same time as Vinales was on his session-topping charge early in the day, and couldn't improve at the end despite a number of laps in the mid-1m29s.

Cal Crutchlow was third quickest on the LCR Honda. Having been one of the first to venture into the 1m29s, replacing Andrea Dovizioso on top of the times with a 1m29.661s effort right on the hour mark, Crutchlow improved to a 1m29.326s to slot in behind Vinales and Marquez.

I say Go Maverick respect Rossi and you will both Excell and be remembered forever in the Motorsports History!

MotoGP is about to START are you READY!?

Why I sold my Yamaha MT09 Tracer

I am sorry for my absence, this Christmas was intense and I actually sold my Tracer..
Here is why:

The Yamaha MT09 Tracer is an amazing all around motorcycle that provides the user a compromise between touring comfort and sportiness. For me the problem is that when I aimed to the market searching for a motorcycle, I wanted to get something that would satisfy both my Adrenalin wishes, as well as provide some long distance comfort, as this was supposed to be a motorcycle that I would enable me to take my wife for a weekend and enjoy the scenario, well a bit more than half of it worked out.

Needless to say I went to the dealers and try'd to experience as much adventure style motorcycles as possible, within my taste and budget, so some where second hand with few kms other more kms and more extras and so on, some of the models I tested:

Triumph Tiger 1200
Triumph Tiger 800
Bmw GS 1200
Bmw GS 800
Yamaha FZ600
Yamaha FZ1
Yamaha Mt09 Tracer
Honda Transalp


Why I decided for the MT09 Tracer, well there is a deeper connection between this motorcycle and a super sports, what I mean with this is that, it is defined in its character , handling and powerful torque CP3 engine, meaning I expected her to provide us nice touring capabilities and if I would desire to crank the throttle it should definitely make my arm pits sweaty.

First issue..
It was noticed when I was at the dealer buying the motorcycle, the accelerator was getting stuck due to the OEM yamaha heated grips elements. Heated grip elements changed and the issue went away, later on it became apparent there was an engineering design flaw, the right grip (the one it should actually stay on all the time), it would go colder than the left, reason why, the previous owner made a small tin foil mod which was blocking the accelerator.

Second issue..
after 2 or 3 days of riding, I noticed I was getting a sored neck, how could this be? its an upstraight motorcycle, its supposed to provide with a more relaxed ride.. well the OEM windscreen creates a stupid massive amount of upper torso wind buffeting.. even adjusting it (with the also extremelly bad designed adjustable windshield bracket) won't provide any difference, so I decided to investigaste over this matter, everyone had the same problem..

Third issue..
Speed wobbles, well I lost a bit of confidence on the motorcycle when I got a speed wobble at 185kms/h out of nothing, this lead me to reading and realizing the front suspension of the Tracer is a budget suspension and it definitely needs the user to dial in the right settings, dampening is controlled only on the right shock ... uuuh big no no, sad and disappointing, I also tested with different windscreens, no wind screen (was the best) no handguards (aileron reverse effect on steering).

Forth issue..
and to be honest the worst of all, the seat, both passenger and driver, I mean, the next motorbike I buy Im going to test it for at least 3 hours, max I could drive for about 1hr , then I would need to start lifting up on the pegs to aliviate pressure on the cocxis, a lot of users reported these issues with comfort. The bracket used by Yamaha to change seat height brakes easily, the plastic fairings right below tend to crack due to bad design of the components.

Fifth issue..
Rust.. well in order to comply with EU regulations, the process of anti rust treatment has been drastically reduced, wich in turn gives us rusty rear shocks and some other parts. My rear shock after our trip to Stelvios pass presented a drop of oxidized water coming from the inside of the assembly (notice that this shock was resprayed with ACF50 by the dealer 2  days after I bought the bike).

sixth issue..
TCT time chain tensioner failure.. replaced under warranty. Obviously the throttle bodies got out of sync.. resulting on rough idle.

Conclusion

I had this motorcycle for 8 months, I have to admit, it has never let me down, always started and never stopped for no apparent reason. Reliability is something I love about Yamaha, my 2004 R6 is the living proof of this, 50.000kms and still has at least another 20 or 30k out of her for sure.
The sum of all these issues and the fact that I mainly bought this bike as a touring and daily motorcycle, ultimately let me to gave up on her and look for something else. She will be missed!!