Front End Chatter #60

Welcome to Front End Chatter E60, sponsored as always by our good friends at www.bikesocial.co.uk and backed by Bennetts, the bike insurance boys and girls. And what a scandal-laden FEC we have this week: • despite a truncated MotoGP/racing section we still manage to disrespeculate on Lorenzo's future at Ducati and compare his debut season so far to Rossi's disaster in 2011... • get into the financial fall-out from the shambles formally known as the Circuit Of Wales... • details of the new Ducati V4 replacement for the Panigale, after the Final Edition – which, it turns out, might not be so final after all, and will be available from September this year and will cost £35,000... • ...and why the V-twin is the most versatile engine layout ever built • BMW's service campaign to check all R1200GSs and GSAs built between late 2013 to date, to make sure the forks aren't about to fall off – and why we should or shouldn't be alarmed by it • and how Honda's blighted 2017 FireBlade, both base and SP versions, stands up at a Mallory Park track day – a Bennetts Mallory Park track day, no less – against Suzuki's new GSX-R1000R All this takes so long we don't get time to read any emails at all, so apologies – but at least it means we'll have a another non-racing FEC in a few weeks' time! Thanks again for listening, and please email us at [email protected] with questions and comments, or get us on the Twitter: @SimonHBikes & @Mufga