WRITING ON THE WALL?
WSB has had a reasonably interesting year thus far, with some terrific racing, nine different podium hitters and six different race winners. Yet despite this, serial victor Jonny Rea appears to already have the title reasonably wrapped up with five rounds ( at the time of writing) left, leading Chaz Davies by something like 75 points. So how ex actly has this happened? Mostly some wild inconsistency on the part of Ducati and Chaz Davies, with a heavy dash of newfound competitiveness from others thrown into the mix .
Where an off-form Davies/Ducati combo may have still beaten the Yamahas into submission in the past, allowing him to keep close to or to beat Rea, now that’s not a given. Last year it was a couple of silly things like mechanical breakdowns ( and the odd crash) that gave Rea a huge advantage early doors. The same thing is happening this year, and from the outside it would also seem Ducati have taken one eye off the V -twin ball. But, it’s not that simple.
Despite taking four wins from the first six races, Davies knew they’d be in deep trouble when they got into the season proper. They have q uite easily been the hardest hit by the new regulations and to see both he and Marco Melandri so ridiculously off the pace at some rounds, clearly struggling, said as much. When you then throw in the near perfect combination of Rea and his K awasaki, it’s no real wonder why he’s running away with things again. There’s enough points left to be won that Davies could mount a challenge, but he’d have to win every remaining race to do so. O r, something would have to happen to Rea, more bad luck like his coming together with Sykes at Brno, for ex ample. We’ve seen it happen in the past enough times, but at the same time, can we see it happening here in 2018 ? Right now, no, but we’d happily be proven wrong!