CLASSIC RACER TOP 10 MOMENTS

For many years the World Superbike championship was the world’s number one four-stroke racing series – it really had it all. It had the men – youngsters on their way up, hungry for success and fearless, as well as grizzled veterans who had seen it all before and wanted to prove a point and bag one last big pay day. This was before political correctness and sponsor-speak. Young or old, the racers never held back. Up-and-comers like Troy Corser, Colin Edwards, Anthony Gobert, our own no-nonsense Carl Fogarty, the super-cool Scott Russell and then the old guard like Robbie Phillis (Syph to his friends), Raymond Roche (hard as nails) and former GP ace Marco Lucchinelli, who later got into trouble with the police over cocaine possession… Each and every one was a character. World Superbikes had the circuits too. Some were the best in the world, like Donington Park, through to the old Hockenheim, the spectacular Osterreichring and some very iffy circuits, such as the pre-gp Laguna Seca, where the barriers and straw bales seemed oh-so close. Whatever the circuit, all these men gave no quarter and asked for none in return. And then there were the bikes. Like Ducati’s 851 and 888, morphing into the 916 series. Honda’s VFR750R RC30, which took the first two titles, Bimota’s YB4 EI, Yamaha’s steel-framed FZ750S, then the exotic OW-01 and YZF750. Kawasaki’s GPX750, then ZXR and ZX-7R models and Suzuki’s GSX-R750S… Yes, in the glory years of World Superbikes the series had it all and, arguably, it knocked even 500cc Grand Prix into a cocked hat for excitement and incident. Little wonder then that you would see crowds of around 120,000 at the UK’S WSB event at Brands Hatch, which dwarfed the crowds at the British bike GP… So what really made World Superbikes so special during its first 15 or so years? Just ask the two old rivals, Carl Fogarty and Aaron Slight. Slighty, a 13-time race winner and three-time series runner-up, says: “It was definitely the best time to race in World Superbikes. It was more raw back then and we had tyre manufacturers battling it out there too.” Carl adds: “I think the success of World Superbikes, at least from the mid-1990s, was that many things came together at the same time. The Sky TV coverage for one – they did behind the scenes things and stuff. And you had the characters to support that, like Corser, Gobert, Haga, Edwards, Slight, Russell and some former GP winners. “You also had the bikes out there racing that you could actually buy. It was a combination of a lot of things and it made WSB the biggest world four-stroke bike championship in the world. “To be part of it was amazing. Sometimes I don’t think we appreciated what it was and how big it was at the time.”