THE TABLES HAVE TURNED
As I sit down after round eight of the 2019 World Superbike championship, I can’t help but think about what the hell has happened recently. After the Jerez sprint race, Alvaro Bautista looked, let’s be honest, to have the season sewn up with a 61-point lead over Jonathan Rea. Winning nine of the 11 (full length) races up to that point, it really was looking like the main challenge was who would finish second, with WSBK looking to be hitting the doldrums again.
Yet Donington came and went, and apart from a bit of rain on the Saturday it was a great weekend. It had the biggest crowd in six years, and they got to see some great racing on Sunday in a glorious-ooking, and newly refurbed Donington Park Circuit. But surprisingly, the crowd size wasn’t the biggest shock. The fact that Jonathan Rea now heads to Laguna Seca with a 24-point lead over Bautista is. Yes, 24. In seven races JR has taken 85 valuable points away from the previously charging Spaniard. Let’s look back. JR looked comfortable and controlled in Italy. Even with one of the crash/ saves/rollovers of the century it was a brilliant weekend for the green team. But a triplet of wins at the UK round for Rea must have hurt Bautista, as he could only manage a single podium on Sunday alongside a fourth – and what could be another crucial non finish on the Saturday.
But it’s this non finish that got me thinking. A rider of Bautista’s quality, an ex MotoGP pilot with 11 wins on the bounce on his debut in
WSBK, shouldn't be crashing out of what was a distant fifth place in race one. Yeah, the conditions were a bit tricky, but they were the same for everyone. So it shows one of two things. Or maybe both.
The first being that that new WSBK spec Ducati V4R, although super, stupidly fast, is really hard to ride. This is backed up by Davies, Laverty and Rinaldi all having a tough time adapting to it. The second thing is, it seems that whenever Bautista is racing, in whatever position he’s in, he’s fully on the limit. Whether he’s fifth at Doni, or has a second lead on the first lap at Jerez, he’s giving it his all, and a bit more.
Compare that to Rea’s results from this year. When Bautista has run away with the lead, JR has sat on it and taken the points, and where he’s had the opportunity to pounce he’s taken it. That’s what makes a champ.
So we head into the last five rounds of the season, and I’ve got a funny feeling that JR is going to be absolutely on it. On the grid for Race two at Donington, I had a brief chat with him; he was just about to go and race, fully focussed, yet he could still crack a joke with me on the grid. It was then that I realised the Jonathan of old is back: relaxed, confident and enjoying himself for the first time in a long time. Those three things make a fast rider and at the likes of Portimao and Laguna, he will have the edge over Bautista, compared to somewhere like Jerez. Don’t get me wrong, the Spaniard will be fast and will be up there, but when he needs to be taking big chunks of points away from the Irishman I’m not sure it will be at these circuits. The final three rounds though? They’ll be anyone’s guess. The long straights and start/stop nature of Magny Cours will suit the Ducati, but another new circuit for Bautista in Argentina might make for a hard time – and then Qatar will be an out-and-out dog fight I reckon.
But as we’ve seen so far this year, anything can happen. From dominating the first half of the year and looking untouchable to crashing left, right and centre, heading in the second half of the year almost a race win of points down from JR. It’s been a rollercoaster, and we haven’t even got to the best part yet. We thought this year of World Superbikes would be good. It’s turning out to be a bit better than that.