Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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The Future of World Superbike sense. Even privateer Ducatis need lots of expensive love and care - and unlike Lori Capirossi's West Honda NSR500, they are still not capable of getting you on the podium. Thus with even more of the manufacturers' shrinking budgets being spent on GP machinery in terms of R&D, it appears that SBK International and the FIM have - under pressure from the manufacturers - recognized that to keep any level of true factory interest, and to level the playing field between the current extremes of SBK performance, Superbike racing has to become less obsessed with building watered-down versions of four-stroke GP machines and get back to its streetbike roots. This is, in the most blatant terms, a complete about-turn from the FIM and SBK International's stance taken on the recent kit-parts saga. Without going over old ground too much, a few years ago there was an agreement that the factories would in an effort to keep costs down and general competitiveness up - build World Superbike machines using only a pre-determined range of kit parts, which would be available to any team with the required (and perfectly reasonable) money to buy them. When the GP world announced its firm intention to go racing with fourstrokes, there was an immediate change of heart from the organizers and the FIM, a move that was almost universally unpopular with the factories, who had already started on their kit-part development programs. Part of the reason Honda made a twin was that the kit parts would be cheaper to manufacture (less parts to make, obviously) while Yamaha had actually designed the R7 with one inscrutable eye making it a kit-parts special, with lots of trick bits already present on the expensive streetbike package, allowing their cost-capped range of full race parts to be more effective. Hence when the kit parts rules were dropped, and when Haga lost his chance of showing off his number-one plate in 2001, Yamaha left the series - and not just for the official reasons that they needed to concentrate their efforts on develop_ ing their new four-stroke M 1 GP bike. So it appears that the 2004 rules will perform the job that the kit parts ruling was not ultimately allowed to, . albeit in a very different form. That is, make the World Championship more competitive, more friendly to privateer teams (keeping the grids up) and more attractive to small manufacturers, who had less chance of being clobbered by Honda's money or excluded by Ducati's strictly rationed factory bike supremacy. From this perspective, accusations of inconsistency in the philosophy of the FIM and World Superb ike organiz· 18 NOVEMBER 28, 2001 • cue • ers now seem to have some bearing in truth, although both would be quick to"disagree. Central to the whole new thinking on World Superbike racing is a return to a reflection of the bikes that the manufacturers actually make in numbers and the public buys in numbers. And now is a good point to underline that fact that the manufacturers have played their full part in drawing up the way ahead, and have gone on record as saying that they will all be represented in the 2004 World Superbike Championship when the new rules come in. The new rules, so vilified by some, are if nothing else an indication that the production-based racing scene has changed a lot since the first World Superbike races in 1988. The 750 sports streetbike category, so vibrant in the days of the sub 100 hp 600cc Race Replica, has shrunk in recent years, with all the main factories concentrating their efforts on 1000cc megabikes or 600cc bikes with 750cc punch. Obvious as it may sound, it is also easier to find big horsepower with a 1000cc base than a 750, thus making a lot of the super-trick internals of a current Superbike, or the even tricker internals of the new generation MotoGP machines, an unnecessary luxury. The outright power wilJ be theoretically limited by the restrictor plates anyway, and there has already been a clear undertaking that the new rules will be fully flexible season-on-season to prevent one engine configuration dominating all the others. Let's hope that that is one point on which there will be no compromise, because the unwillingness of the governing bodies to meddle in the rules to make a production-based class competitive for all comers is precisely what has brought Superbike racing to its current crossroads. It has also made the factories stand up for their collective interests, by the formation of the MSMA, which operates across both GP and World Superbike boundaries In its simplest terms, the reason for the capacity change is that the majority of the Japanese makers felt they could not realistically win the second most prestigious bike title in the world - and even if they did they had to do it on bikes which they did not sell in any volume, like the ancient Kawasaki ZX- 7R and outrageously expensive Yamaha R7. And it appears that the GSX-R750, in World Superbike guise at least, is maybe not the best horse in the thoroughbred corral. Now we can see why the manufacturers were so gung-ho for a blanket 1000cc lirnit, and so acquiescent to the notion that engine power should be reigned in - even if they have unavoidably agreed to one R&D hand n e _ s e Like it or not, 1OOOcc fours are on their way in all forms of racing and in at least two domestic championship they are already here. Australia is one. The All-Japan Champi. onship another. The latter may be dominated by conventional Superbikes right now but Keiichi Kitagawa, a former World Superbike race winner in 1999 at Sugo, has been cam· paigning an official GSX-R1 000 to fairly good effect in the All-Japan Series, with a squall of top- 10 fmishes to its credit. In the U.K. Superbike Championship, by far the most prestigious in Europe, 1000cc machines will be allowed in next year. They will, and I quote, "Adhere to a combination of the FIM Superbike and Supersport regulations. The basis of this ruling is that the appearance from the front, rear, and profile of Superbike machines must conform to the homologated shape, but the tuning of engines will be limited to that of the Supersport regulations. "In essence this means that machines' frames. suspensions, wheels, airbox and instru- mentation will remain as they are under the current regulations, but engine tuning will be very limited. "The eligible machines for the 2002 British Superbike Championship will be those that are homologated by the FIM for their Stocksport/Superproduction categories, as well as existing machines from this year's championship running to the current FIM Superbike regulations." So there. Endurance Racing The World Endurance Championship, which has long been a sideshow in global terms has also undergone something of a more than cosmetic makeover. The official 2001 World Championship may have been battled over by the 750 fours and 1000ccc twins but it was a 1000ccc four which took the main plaudits, and was acknowledged as the real championship winner. The official Suzuki 1000cc entry was just one of many which packed the top of the podiums at the main Endurance rounds. Superbike and Endurance will have increased crossover in the 2002 season and the future, with the regulations mirroring each other, except for lights and other endurance paraphernalia. being tied behind their World Superbike engineers' backs due to the handicapping nature of the new rules. It appears that because of the restrictor plates, weight limit differentials, treaded tires and limited tire stocks in qualifying, that the World Superbike lap times will get slower, at least to start with. Then again, they said that about the introduction of treaded tires to F-l racing, and that wasn't the case - although it has carried on in its own uniquely boring but hyper-successful fashion. The simple fact remains that no one knows how many of the present proposals for World Superbike will still be in place when 2004 rolls around. Even if all the new rules are enacted to the very letter of the current proposals, the furor surrounding them will disappear overnight if the racing proves to be close, exciting, varied and laden with dramatic overtakes and incidents. Will anyone care if the racing is simply awesome, but a second a lap or so slower than it is now? The lesson, peculiarly, comes from the fact that the best MotoGP racing for decades has come about because most of the bikes are almost identikit V-four two-strokes, a form of self· handicapping in itself, even if this engine configuration is indisputably the best format under the current rules. Do the public, sponsors or anyone else really care about absolute lap times as long as the spectacle is unpredictable, competitive and exciting to watch? And the lap times won't be that much slower, even on treaded tires, with full Superbike chassis underpinning the somewhat strangled engines. Change in World Superbike was inevitably coming and according to SBK International President Paolo Flammini at least, we may even see the tantalizing prospect of the 1000cc rules introduced even earlier than 2004. "Let me say that we have not yet renounced to consider the application of the 1000cc rules in 2003," he confirmed on October 25. "This is an item of discussion between us and the FIM and the MSMA. For sure the latest will be 2004, but we should not exclude that it should be 2003." Another nugget of coal to fan the flames of controversy surrounding the new direction of World Superbike? Or a common sense idea that should be adopted to keep more manufacturers in the championship to maintain its status and stop it backsliding? Kawasaki's homologation for its geriatric ZX- 7RR is up at the end of next season anyway, and they will be off GP racing instead, unless it really is 2003 for the 1000cc rules, in which case they might stay - if they have a suitable bike. For now we can only make informed guesses, but one thing is for sure, the revolutions in every class of motorcycle racing don't seem to be finished yet. Not by a long and convoluted way. And as for the doom and gloom merchants, who see World Superbike racing simply dying from malnutrition within two years? Not that likely, not when you consider what is at stake for some. World Sl:Iperbike could be murdered or commit suicide for sure, but Superbike racing - in its present 750 and future 1000cc guises - underpins all the main domestic championships in the world, including the important Suzuka 8-Hour race. And what about the chance of the 8-Hour running