Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

U@[Jf?@[?Df;0!JiJiJ @@[fj]@@[? @Df1@[?f;0@@!lI@[?[t]@DD ~ IJ a ..L-_ "plans yet for Bike Week in Daytona Beach, Florida, can now find lodging information online at the Daytona Beach sent to 1412 Estelle Lane, Newport Beach, CA 92660. Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. The website's address is Bimota will host a 500 Vdue Trophy a spec road race class for the Vdue, scheduled to run in Europe in 2000. The series begins on March 16 at Misano in Italy. The series will total seven rounds. D D D D www.daytonabeach.com. Noted custom bike builder Arlen Ness recently became an authorized Victory Motorcycle dealer in the East Bay of Northem Califomia. Ness opened his Victory dealership in his existing shop in San Leandro, California, but will soon move into a new 70,000-square-foot building being built in Dublin. "We are thrilled to expand our relationship with Arlen by having him become an authorized Victory dealer," said Terry Nesbitt, Victory's national sales manager. "Remarkably, this is Arlen's first experience as a dealer seiling new motorcycles." D D A full four stages were removed from the center of the Paris-Dakar-Cairo Rally as a result of "serious risk of an external terrorist attack" in the country of Niger. Everything between Niamey, on Niger's western border, and Sabha, Ubya, has been eliminated, meaning that the rally will be nearly 2000 miles shorter than originally planned. The decision required that 336 vehicles and 1365 people be transported via three huge Russian Antonov aircraft, which worked around the clock for several days beginning on January 12. The rally got back under way on Monday, January 17, with Austrian Heinz Kinigadner winning the stage from Sabha to Waw el Kabir. This marked the first time the rally had been run in Ubya since 1992, • In the overall results, Sp"lliard Juan Roma leads the way on his KTM, with last year's winner Richard Sainet 23 minutes back on a BMW. KTM's Kinigadner is third, Oscar Gollardo fourth, and in fifth is BMW's Jimmy Lewis. Lewis hit speeds of up to 116 mph on the first stage back before melting his rear tire insert. He's an hour and a half down on the leader, a difference that will be difficult to make up wjth the shortened distance. That said, bis big 900cc twin is well-suited for the rally's flat later stages, but only if BMW can get its tire inserts to withstand the high speeds. The rally is scheduled to .finish at the foot of the Great Pyramids near Cairo, Egypt, on January 23. Benelli owner Andrea Merloni rode the Benelli Tornado at a test session in Misano, Italy, prior to Christmas, mainly just to show the bike off to his VIP guests, according to Cycle News contributor Paolo Gozzi. "We still have a lot of work to do," said Riccardo Rosa, the Tornado project leader and former project leader of Cagiva's 500cc GP effort. "Our three-cylinder, injected 'engine gives us good results on the dyno and we are very confident to build a superbike that will be competitive for the 2001 season." D D 8 D The Trident Rowan Group

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