NEW RULES – TBC, WSB
FIM SUPERBIKE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
The new rules conceived and slated by WSB overlords Dorna to rejuvenate the series, on the evidence from the first races in Oz, will only be ratified as a success or failure after we’ve had a few more rounds of racing.
Phillip Island is one of very few aberration tracks left – the old high-speed type that generates hard fought, close racing action. There one often sees usually uncompetitive machines (on the rest of the calendar) up front or performing well, in pretty much all classes of racing, so coming to any conclusions on the current state of WSB would be premature, especially with (as we write) the second round in Thailand being just a couple of days away.
However, there were a few points of interest the new rules provided, mostly to do with speed and over-taking. Both Kawasaki and Ducati’s previously perceived speed advantage has been blunted – just watching Jonny Rea let the brakes off early going into turn one, over and over, looked bloody terrifying, but that’s what he had to do to keep rivals behind him.
Weirder still, was watching some creep up in the slipstream, move to overtake and then, basically, stop. We can only imagine this is partly due to the new rev limits (and new gearing choices to suit), so we asked Ducati’s Chaz Davies about it after watching him suffer a couple of slipstream overtake fails: “It’s possibly something to do with the new rules, it was a bit odd not being able to pass down the straight sometimes, but much depends on the rider, their size and weight, too, so it’s too early to draw any concrete conclusions just yet, although there probably needs to be some kind of rider/bike combined weight limit in WSB, which there isn’t right now.”
A salient point, as his featherweight team-mate Marco Melandri appeared to be the only one to make proper overtakes down the long front straight on his way to a double victory, including a super tight finish in race two to beat Rea, slipstreaming him to the line. If he wins more races, then Ducati will be penalised yet again, which will only hurt the other (much heavier) Ducati riders in the field.
Which is another reason why this whole variable rev-limit thing just isn’t the right way forwards. In the years prior to Dorna’s take over, WSB featured loads of different winners, both riders and manufacturers, with several triumphing on privateer kit. In the final season (2012) before their stewardship, nine different riders won races, on five different marques of machine from the six manufacturers competing, with three races being won by privateers. Since then, these variances have dropped alarmingly to two manufacturers and a handful of riders, which begs the question – what was wrong with how things were? Using ‘financial reduction’ to justify it is nonsense, they spend just as much getting the most out of (or bending) strict restrictions as they would with the previous, slightly more open, rule set.
But, if we do get a return to those heady days of never quite knowing who is going to win, we’ll stop moaning about it completely, so let’s just see what happens…