Dedication, Enthusiasm and Fun for Metzeler at the 2013 Edition of the Tourist Trophy

A double in the Bikesocial.co.uk Lightweight with James Hillier and Dean Harrison, second place for Gary Johnson in the Royal London Superstock, races always hard fought up to the last lap in all classes and the Metzeler 150th Ultimate Party brought excitement to lovers of the German brand and of road racing

ROME, GA – June 10, 2013 – (Motor Sports Newswire) – A positive balance sheet resulted from Metzeler’s participation in the 2013 edition of the Tourist Trophy not only for the satisfactions and the placings obtained by the riders but also for the atmosphere that the German brand was able to evoke on the island creating the Metzeler Village at the National Sports Centre in Douglas and organizing the Metzeler 150th Ultimate Party last night at Villa Marina Royal Hall which was attended by the Metzeler riders and by more than 1000 motorcyclists who had come to the Isle of Man to watch the races and to experience the special atmosphere to be breathed around these spectacular competitions on the roads.

Metzeler’s commitment and the dedication of teams and riders for which the German tire brand was the technical supplier was constant for the entire duration of the Tourist Trophy, enabling good results and excellent placings to be obtained. In particular on Friday 7 June James Hillier and Dean Harrison won a splendid double for Metzeler claiming respectively the first and second place on the podium in the class Bikesocial.co.uk Lightweight TT while Gary Johnson was the protagonist right up to the end in the Royal London Superstock obtaining second place at the finish. The other races of the week were also hard fought by the Metzeler riders up to the last lap with the Pokerstars Senior TT which saw James Hillier struggle up to the last corners for third place on the podium, but having then to make do with fourth, followed over the finishing line by Guy Martin (5th) and Michael Rutter (6th). These last two, however, helped to make the competition spectacular with breathtaking overtaking obtaining also excellent placings (respectively 4th and 6th) in the Dainese Superbike.

For Metzeler taking part in the 2013 Tourist Trophy was also the occasion to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its foundation together with its fans from all over Europe for whom the little blue elephant company made available the Metzeler Village, a camp site at which it was possible to stay for free, and organized the Metzeler 150th Ultimate Party last night with the participation of DC/AC, an AC/DC tribute band, and of many riders, much loved by the many – more than one thousand – motorcyclists present at the party.

Enrico D’Aloja, Metzeler Brand Manager, said: “Our intention was to celebrate the 150-year history of our brand together with our fans in a place, the Isle of Man, which historically has always had great charm and appeal for motorcyclists all over the world not only for the special nature of races run on public roads but also and above all for the atmosphere, the enthusiasm and the love of bikes, that you can breathe on the island during the days when the Tourist Trophy is held. Being able to celebrate our 150th anniversary together with the riders and motorcyclists who had come to the island was the greatest satisfaction for us!”.

Metzeler’s commitment to road racing activities has not finished with this event. Some of the Metzeler riders, including Guy Martin, Gary Johnson, Dean Harrison and James Hillier will in fact take part in the Ulster Gran Prix, the “fastest road race in the world” scheduled from 12 to 17 August in Northern Ireland, a competition in which Metzeler will be a title sponsor from this year and for the next three years, confirming its interest and involvement in road competitions both in the short and the long term.

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Top position on the podium for Pirelli at SES TT ZERO with Michael Rutter

Third victory in a row for Pirelli and the English rider on his Motoczysz E1pc in the race dedicated to zero-emission bikes held every year on the Isle of Man during the Tourist Trophy

MILAN, ITALY – June 5,  2013 – (Motor Sports Newswire) – Pirelli wins the TT Zero for the third year in a row thanks to the excellent team work of Michael Rutter and the entire Segway Racing MotoCzysz squad.

In the saddle of his electric Motoczysz E1pc bike equipped with the new Pirelli Diablo Superbike 17-inch tyres, the 41-year-old English rider known as “The Blade”, crossed the finishing line first, 1.672 seconds ahead of John McGuinness on the Dunlop equipped Mugen Shinden-Ni, followed in third place by Rob Barber over 4 minutes behind.

The TT Zero is a motorcycle race first organised in 2010 and held every year during the Tourist Trophy. The TT Zero race is only open to prototype racing bikes with a technical concept envisaging fossil-free fuel propulsion, and zero toxic or harmful emissions.

Specifically, thanks to the performance of the new 17-inch Pirelli Diablo Superbike tyres, Michael Rutter really hit the throttle in the last lap, registering a record time of 20:38:461, covering the 37.73 miles at an average speed of 109.675 mph. Last year, Rutter had already triumphed against McGuinness, breaking the 100 mile-per-hour record touching averages of 104.056 mph, this year the result was no different but the times achieved are a clear sign of the progress made by the team.

This, the latest in a long line of successes, consolidated and reinforced the strong relationship of trust and collaboration, for over four years, created between Pirelli, the West-Midlands driver, and the team from Portland.

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Norton Motorcycles partnership with Santander PLC

CASTLE DONINGTON, UK – May 25, 2012 – (Motor Sports Newswire) – The resurgent iconic British Motorcycle brand Norton, founded in 1898 has joined forces with Santander PLC and formed a partnership to race the Senior TT 2012.

Norton’s all new British designed and developed race bike the ‘Norton SG1’ bears Santander livery and will be racing the legendary Senior TT race in the Isle of Man on the 8th June.

Santander stepped up and backed the iconic British business in 2011 with an Ex EFG government backed finance loan specifically designed for growing export sales.

Norton Race Team

Garner added “Santander have worked closely with us to understand our business model and support us fully as we grow the business, the job creation and export sales achieved so far are a direct result of our bank funding. Having a world class partner involved in our race team is a great show of confidence for the Norton brand, we now need to work hard and deliver the full potential this partnership has. We have a three year race plan and are fully focussed to develop the race team into a truly world class proposition”.

 

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Norton returns to the Isle of Man TT!!

CASTLE DONINGTON, UK – April 18, 2012 – (Motor Sports Newswire) – Today we launch our new race bike and announce our entry into the Senior TT race 2012.

Over the last 12-18 months Norton have been looking at a return to racing. Given that WSB and BSB only allow Homologated Road bikes into their racing classes, Norton has to look for ‘open’ or ‘prototype’ race classes to enter the new race bike in.

For all of the above, the TT stood out as the very obvious choice for Norton. The hard edge style of racing which gets much closer to fans and supporters in a true and real world way which is a very genuine and passionate form of racing, appeals to Norton far more than the energy drink and lycra clad pit lane of homologated road bike racing.

Ian Mackman is riding the new bike for us, he is a great guy and hugely passionate about his racing. We are pleased to have him in the team working with us to develop the bike. He’s in later for a bit of testing, Donington have kindly helped us with some track time.

The bike itself is a Spondon chassis with Ohlins front and back, BST carbon wheels are shod with Dunlop’s. The engine is an RSV V4, we have been talking to the Aprilia Factory in Italy and similar to CRT we have no absolute factory support off them, but they are there for information and help if and when required.

The bike itself has been built solely within the factory at Donington Park, we have made very many of the parts ourselves within our CNC machine facility here at the Norton factory. For example we have made our own wheel spindles through to throttle bodies! We have a great partner with the fuelling system and electronic package for the bike in Active Technologies Limited.

We’ve gone with our traditional polished aluminium tank, all the styling and bodywork has been put together here at the factory also. Replicast are working with us to complete the aero package.

Norton see this as a three year project, we are genuinely happy to come home with a solid finish this year. Any position would be a bonus! Over the three years we would like to be in a position to be podium competitive, although we totally understand it is a huge mountain to climb and we have our work cut out to achieve this.

Only now are we going racing on the budget we have available from sponsors and other commercial racing income, we have taken no money from the factory road bike business. We see this as a sustainable route to racing for Norton. Some suppliers to the road bike business have been really helpful and this has helped reduce costs to develop and make the bike.

We have lost no focus in our road bike business and we remain totally committed to growing volume in our road bike business to meet demand for the Commando 961.

The TT organisers have been really helpful and a refreshing change in the racing game. The Norton team are looking forward to getting there and providing some excitement and fun for the TT crowd, we’ve even lined up a TV presenter to serve brews for the fans front of garage!!

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Isle of Man Races to the Hybrid Cloud With EMC VPLEX

Integration with EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) and Unified Storage reduces operating costs by 15 percent; improves performance by eight times; and increases utilization of existing storage by 40%

LONDON, UK – September 22, 2011 – (Motor Sports Newswire) -  EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced that the British Isle of Man Government‘s Information Systems Division has implemented a cloud-based technology infrastructure for more efficient, flexible and reliable delivery of its public services, using EMC VPLEX technology and EMC Unified Storage with solid-state flash drives.

As part of its IT transformation initiative, the Government’s entire public service infrastructure has been moved onto a hybrid cloud service, providing shared access-anywhere, including over 1,000 critical government applications such as email, financial accounting, customer relationship management and health services.

Customer Benefits:

• Enhanced performance and reduced operating costs: Data availability and system performance has improved by eight times. Operating costs have fallen by 15 per cent
• Improved storage utilization: The usage of existing storage resources has been increased by 40 %, meaning that the disk pool will now only require an upgrade when it reaches 80% capacity, instead of the previous 60%
• Automatic storage optimization: VPLEX with Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) automatically analyzes system usage patterns for improved operational efficiency
• Data transfer to fast-access storage: In-demand applications and data are automatically moved to flash drives for increased availability, then back onto fibre channel disk drives as demand reduces

The Isle of Man has deployed a combination of the EMC VPLEX virtual storage platform – a critical enabler for the journey to the cloud which allows organizations to federate information across multiple data centers and access it from anywhere – with EMC Unified Storage. This platform is enabling the Isle of Man with new approaches for delivering IT as a flexible, efficient, and reliable service.

Peter Clarke, Chief Technology Officer at the Isle of Man Government, said, “The Isle of Man Government is an early adopter of new technologies, and our analysis indicated that VPLEX would reduce operating costs by 15 %. We wrote our business plan around this. It was a compelling argument. Having recognized that VPLEX could further increase service levels while reducing IT costs, we made the decision to purchase – and we are delighted to have realized the projected benefits, and more.”

“By virtualizing our entire server platform and all service applications, the Isle of Man Government has significantly increased service levels as well as data flexibility and availability. In the case of the health service, this means individual patient records are now aggregated and appropriate information made instantly available to doctors, EMT specialists, ambulance technicians, surgeons, nurses and other authorized users,” added Clarke.

Demand for the Isle of Man Government’s public service infrastructure varies regularly due to factors such as tourism seasonality, shift work in government offices and annual events such as the island’s famous TT motorcycle race. The Government’s legacy system was disk-based and tiered in three layers. Previously, when demand for certain applications and data increased, the Information Systems Division would have to manually assign each to a higher tier level.

Now VPLEX Metro, with EMC’s industry-leading FAST technology, analyses system usage patterns and automatically moves in-demand applications to flash drives for increased availability. As demand falls back, the relevant assets are moved back onto fibre channel disk drives.

Implemented over five months, the new public service infrastructure has increased data availability and system performance by a factor of eight, while operating costs have reduced by 15 per cent. Storage utilization has risen by 40 % – using the same amount of hardware as before – and capacity of the Government’s storage area network has tripled. In addition, VPLEX has improved system flexibility by allowing the Isle of Man Government to transfer services from one data center to another in real time.

About EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

EMC is a registered trademark of EMC Corporation. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE: EMC Corporation

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Two Out of Three for Pirelli as Gary Johnson Takes First TT Victory in Supersport Thriller

Pirelli Shod Electric Bike Nudges The Magic 100 MPH at Isle of Man TT

ISLE OF MAN, UK, – June 10, 2011 – (Motor Sports Newswire) – Pirelli rider Gary Johnson today took his first ever TT win this week as Guy Martin took third at the Isle of Man event.  Pirelli earned two spots on the Supersport podium, once again demonstrating the Italian tire brand’s great passion for this unique event.

Johnson controlled the Monster Energy Supersport 600 race from the start to win by 8 seconds and was immediately swamped by well-wishers, including the legendary Giacomo Agostini.

“That was a brilliant race;” said Johnson, “I tried to stay a foot from the hedges like I always do and straight-line it. I made a break from the start and looked at the pit boards to keep the gap steady. The Pirellis worked so well on this Supersport bike from the first to last lap, were consistent all the way through and I don’t think I was too hard on them either. I just tried to stay smooth. What an awesome feeling!”

A clearly frustrated Guy Martin was aggravated at having to slow for a red flag as he logged his twelfth podium at the TT and made it two out of three on the ‘box’ running the Supersport spec Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa tires.

Manx hero Conor Cummins continued his impressive comeback as he finished sixth in a quality packed field. Ben Wylie finished seventh on his YZF-R6 and James Hillier ninth as he continues a fantastic week on his trio of Bournemouth Kawasaki’s.

“What a fantastic first win for Gary, he’s shown terrific speed all week and this is so deserved for Gary, Phil Reed and the whole team,” said Pirelli UK’s Racing Manager Jason Griffiths. “With Guy also on the podium this has been a great race for us and the Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa tires remained consistently strong through all four laps.”

Pirelli Shod Electric Bike Nudges 100MPH Mark at TT
Pirelli BSB star Michael Rutter took his Segway MotoCzysz machine to an Electric bike record 99.6mph lap, just missing out on a £10,000 award for the first triple figure lap, at the Isle of Man TT today. His team-mate Mark Miller made it a Pirelli 1-2 in this innovative race event.

Michael, who choose a Pirelli Diablo Superbike ‘slick’ rear and Pirelli Diablo SuperCorsa treaded front tire, remarked, “99.6 mph, that’s the story of my life! I tried to conserve battery life and stay smooth, it’s a totally different way of riding but I really enjoyed it. We only saw the bike on Wednesday, so I think if we had more time there would be more to come set-up wise.”

The machine also hit an impressive 149.5mph on the Sulby Speed Trap at the hands of Rutter, who is more used to his 200mph Riders Bathams Ducati which he runs on Pirelli tires in both the TT and British Superbike Championship.

Pirelli tires were chosen by the majority of the grid as their steel belt construction is renowned for their low rolling resistance, essential in this power sapping electric race.
“Michael is a wily old fox and I know he will be gutted to have missed the 100mph, but he looked like he really enjoyed it and logged another TT win,” Jason Griffiths, Pirelli’s UK Racing Manager, added. “This new technology is so interesting to bike manufacturers and indeed our engineers are also intrigued back at the factory.”
Pirelli Tire North America designs, develops, manufactures and markets tires for passenger vehicles in both the original equipment and replacement markets as well as markets and distributes tires for motorcycles and motorsports. Located in Rome, Georgia, Pirelli’s Modular Integrated Robotized System (MIRS) employs state-of-the-art technology to manufacture tires for both export and domestic markets.  For more information please visit www.us.pirelli.com.

For further information please contact:
Christopher Wall,
Director of Marketing, Motorcycle Division
706.368.5427
christopher.wall@pirelli.com

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Mission Motors Unveils Mission R Electric Racing Superbike

New factory racer features latest MissionEVT technology, will race in TTXGP

LONG BEACH, CA – December 17, 2010 – (Motor Sports Newswire) – Today at the Long Beach International Motorcycle Show, Mission Motors unveiled the Mission R, the company’s new electric racing superbike. Featuring the company’s latest powertrain technology and an entirely new race-ready design, the motorcycle will lead the company’s upcoming 2011 racing program.

“We are excited to announce the Mission R, our compact and powerful factory electric racebike,” said Mission Motors’ Founder Edward West. “This bike represents the culmination of all the company’s learning in both electric powertrains and motorcycle engineering, and is the purest expression of electric performance.”

The Mission R features the latest components from MissionEVT, the EV powertrain technology arm of Mission Motors. MissionEVT components are powerful, intelligent, and efficient. The Mission R packs 14.4 kWh and 141 horsepower in a package smaller than a modern 600cc sportbike. The liquid-cooled 3-phase AC Induction motor creates 115 ft-lbs of torque at the crank from 0 to 6400 RPM, propelling the Mission R to a top speed of over 160mph in a single gear. The MissionEVT 100kW motor controller, with customizable regenerative braking maps and throttle maps, allows the rider to tune the bike to his or her preferences.

The Mission R chassis, designed by James Parker, features an entirely new design for integrating and balancing the weight and volume of a large EV battery pack into a motorcycle chassis. The chassis is wrapped in a new and aerodynamic industrial design by Tim Prentice of Motonium, with a small frontal-area and aggressive ergonomics.

The Mission R will hit the track in early 2011 and will compete in the TTXGP racing series along with other races, events, and demonstrations.

“Racing is in our DNA,” West said. “Mission Motors participated in the historic first Isle of Man TTXGP in 2009. Later that year, we went to the Bonneville Salt Flats and set an AMA Speed Record for electric motorcycles in 2009. With the help of our sponsors, including Texas Instruments and Pectel/Cosworth, we are excited to be returning to the track in 2011 with the phenomenal Mission R. The crucible of the racing circuit is one of the key ways we advance our technology. Pushing the envelope for what is possible with electric drive shapes not only the future of motorsports, but the future of transportation.”

Learn more about Mission Motors and the Mission R at
http://RideMission.com
.

About Mission Motors

Mission Motors is an electric vehicle company creating the most advanced production electric motorcycle in the world while developing leading EV powertrain technology through its MissionEVT division.  Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company’s elite team of engineers draw from expertise in the powersports, automotive, robotics, battery and software industries to develop technologies that maximize the potential of the electric drivetrain.  The concept is simple: Redefine the world of electric vehicle performance.

SOURCE: Mission Motors

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