P50
PREVIEW
2013 WORLD SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP
BY ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE
W
hen the curtain lifts on
the 2013 World Superbike Championship on
February 24 at a smoother, faster
Phillip Island track, fresh from its
$3 million resurfacing upgrade,
it'll be for what's already being
termed as the last "real" World
Superbike Series. After Dorna's
shocking annexation of the championship last October at the behest of the Bridgepoint financial
group (which owns both MotoGP
and World Superbike), it's widely
expected that Dorna boss Carmelo Ezpeleta and the FIM will
drive through a change in World
Superbike technical rules aimed
at reducing the performance, and
thereby the costs, of the streetbike-derived category for 2014.
A reduction in costs via a Superstock-like rule change that
still preserves the FIM-approved
ultra-level playing field carefully
concocted over the past five
years by World Superbike tech-
nical gurus Steve Whitelock and
Fabio Fazi, which pitches four
radically different types of motorcycles against each other yet
gives each a chance of victory, is
likely to ramp up future grid sizes
via more privateer teams – and
more factories, too. At the stage
that cash-strapped Yamaha returns to World Superbike in 2014,
and is joined by MV Agusta and
KTM (all are on record as committed to competing in a reducedcost World Superbike category)
– a series involving nine different
LAST CALL
THE RULES FOR WORLD SUPERBIKE WILL
LIKELY CHANGE NEXT YEAR, MAKING THIS THE
LAST OF THE "REAL" CHAMPIONSHIPS FOR
THE STREETBIKE-DERIVED CLASS
