Beer bikes: who won on track?

You wouldn’t think that seeing the buzzy little 600s out on track battling it out would be better racing than that seen in 500cc Grand Prixs or even World Superbikes, but often it was the case, with the class attracting veterans and youngsters alike. In the showrooms as well, battle was joined. From being an underdog class in the early 1990s, by 1995 the 600cc sportsbike segment was gaining ground on the superbike class. With the 750cc four-cylinder road machines under attack from both the 600s and the 900cc/1000cc litre sportsbikes, by the early noughties the 750 was all but dead. Give it another few years and the 600cc machines would be outselling the litre-class sportsbikes two to one. In racing the 600 class had been in some confusion for a while, so that by the mid-1990s GP promoters were running the World Thunderbike series as a spoiler for the Flammini/sbkpromoted European Supersport Series. In either the steel-framed Honda CBRS held their own, but when ESS became World Supersport you needed to have either a Ducati 748 twin (allowed under their rules) or the rapid Belgarda Yamaha Thundercat. With the launch of the new GSX-R600, Team Alstare Corona would take the 1998 and 1999 WSS championships with the late, great Fabrizio Pirovano (pictured) and diminutive Stephane Chambon. Yamaha and Kawasaki would nab the next two titles, while the F-sport Honda of Fabien Foret and his Ten Kate Honda team would take the 2002 world title. This would start a clean sweep of the World Supersport titles for Ten Kate and the Honda CBR600RR version from 2003-2008 until Yamaha won in 2009 with Cal Crutchlow. Sadly, the Suzuki hasn’t won the title since the late 1990s, but the class itself in the showrooms has also been in steady decline.