R&G celebrates 10 years

2009 sees R&G Racing celebrating 10 years of manufacturing innovative crash protection for motorcycles.

And the R&G Racing team say that with their decade celebrated this year they’ve sold around 500,000 crash protection items since they started business, potentially saving their customers millions of pounds in crash damage.

• Compare and buy motorcycle products

Originally formed by Richard Taylor in the early 1990s as a precision engineering company, R&G made components for the aerospace industry and Formula One, but Richard soon saw a gap in the market making high-quality crash protection for motorcycles so in 1999 R&G Racing was formed.

From their first crash protection item for the GSX-R750, R&G Racing now produces crash protection for around 250 different models of motorcycle.

Simon Hughes, R&G Racing’s Sales Director, says: “What makes R&G Racing such a special company is that we were formed a decade ago concentrating solely on crash protection.

“We were the first to be really serious about crash protection. We’re constantly developing the product, using feedback from both the track and our road users.

“Sometimes we may re-develop a product to make it better as a result of that feedback or re-design it, like our Aero Crash Protectors, which gave the product a much more aerodynamic shape and a fresh new look when we released these items in the spring of 2007.”

Over the years R&G Racing has proliferated into other products, such as tail-tidies, knee-sliders, exhaust hangers, cotton reels for paddock stands and bike covers, as well as expanding the crash protection range with engine case sliders, bar-end sliders, fork protectors, toe guards and variants of its original exhaust protectors.

Simon adds: “I think the reason we’ve been around so long is that we focus on what we do best.

“We have expanded the range of products, but we’re not branching out too far. Our tail-tidies were launched with the 2003 Kawasaki ZX-6R – a bike that was crying out for a tail-tidy – and we’ve expanded on that range every year with each new model that has arrived.”

R&G Racing scored an industry ‘first’ when eBike Insurance customers became entitled to a reduction in their premiums upon fitting R&G Racing crash protection. R&G Racing is also the title sponsor of the R&G Racing Suzuki GSX-R Trophy.

Simon adds: “People today are becoming much more analytical about materials.

“Many companies use brittle material in the crash sliders themselves, or bolts that could damage a frame in the event of a crash.

“We use ‘soft’ bolts and insert sleeves in the bobbins so that, should the worst happen, the R&G Racing crash protection takes the punishment and reduces the damage done to the bike.”