Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

People Power unny how things go in cycles. Or how things 80 in the world of cycles, for that matter. Last time World Superbike was covered on this page it Barros has done it as recently as last year, Biaggi several times in his career - if sel- dom repeatedly - while most of the four definite deportees have made a decent fist oI MotoGP at one time or other, dur- ing what was certainly the most competi- tive time in its history. \Mth MotocP rapidly cooling and hard- ening into the only form that a tripling of machinery budgets in the last three years can possibly sustain - a core of supported factory teams, with everyone else circling wagons, making deals with their former devils, or leavinE the financially wounded in the jungle with a loaded pistol - those riders now left high and desiccated need to find a ride somewhere else. Enter World Superbike; where any rider of real abiliry can fancy his chances of at least mce wins, whatever his adopted Maybe 2004 European Superstock Champion Lorenzo Alfonsi? - iust because of his relative inexperience and ego-bruis- ing 2005 entry into what was an already resurgent class. Vittorio lannuzzo, another former European Superstock Champion? - because of his privateer Suzuki status. How about ),,oung Brit Chris Jones? - he's not only on a 900cc Petronas triple, and a complete Superbike rookie, ,ust up from the British Supersport Championship. f4ichel Fabrizio? - another Superbike rookie coming in maybe a year too early - even for an ex-WCM MotoGP rider like him. Astonishing as it sounds, maybe even 2002 World Supersport Champion Fabien Foret is a candidate. as he'll not be on a factory Alstare Suzuki, just a cooking ver- Superbikes, Superiport - riders without a World Championship of any color or a row of race-winning medals rivaling a Soviet field-marshall's tunic were in the minority. Anyone with less than a proven National Championship history or Euro title was lucky to get a saddle; such was the draw of the new order, and the need for the factories to get the best talent possible to maintain their status within it. Well, times have changed, in MotoGP and World Superbike. MotoGP is going for the future vote in many cases, with a heartening influx of unquestioned new talent to the MotoGP factory-saddle store. They may not be quite ready to beat Vale over a season just yet, but they will ready when he moves on - sometime soon we presume. A simultaneous shrinkinB of lhe Priva- teer MotoGP entry and the rapid rebuilding of World Superbike as a citadelwell worth storming a8ain. have all con- spired to attract maybe the biggest strength in depth entry - right from the highest paid art; sans weaving gold on the facto- ries' floors to the squi.es attempting alchemy in the rela- tive serf's quarters - the World Superbike class has ever seen. And not that much in terms of full factory setups or works budgets arnong them. We are not talking the world's absolute best riders on the fastest bikes ever seen, but with no central Rossifigure to try and overcome, with no 210 hp bike exPected to be obviously better than any othe[ and with everyone draw- ing from same choices of rapidly improving Pirelli tires, it's no wonder that the field is so ful- somely padded with pace. The absolute zenith of World Superbike could obviously be spiked upward all the more by the introduction of both Biaggi and Barros, and by the time you read this they may both, (either or neirher) be conllrmed in the 2006 mix. But even if they are not, a quick dance through names like Bayliss, Xaus, Corser, Abe, Chili, MuSgeridSe. Haga, Rolfo, Pift, Toseland, Laconi, Nieto, Lanzi. Kagayama, Pift, Manin, Neukirchner and Battaini reads well for a championship, which even two years ago featured lust a hard- core handful of class riders. and lidle in the way of middle-order classiness. How many reasons to be cheerful for World Superbike's prospects in 2006? - about 20 out of 28, at last count. Cll F was to extol the rebirth of the class because of the machines and tire rules that now make it an everyman cateSory like it was at the beSinning of its life in the late '80s. The latest boost to World Superbike's returnrng fonunes. however, has come in terms of flesh and blood. Carbon units. People. Because as Valentino Rossi has shown us many times, the person riding it is always more important than the chosen machine. Whether or not GP top-8uns Alex Barros and Max Biaggi show up on the World Superbike Srid in 2006 is an unknown, as of this minute, but the fact that they are both on the brink is not iust a boost for the series itself. it's a reconfirmation that World Superbike is at least the next most desirable thing to get involved in for riders not yet in the MotoGP paddock. The Barros/Biaggi will-they- won't-they story is now reach- ing Nordic saga proportions; but even if Alex and Max do not come over to the ''other" World Championship, there are still four MotoGP riders of 2005 about to become Wodd Superbike riders in 2005 - Troy Bayliss, Franco Battaini, Ruben Xaus and Robby Rolfo. None of them are exactly Rossi, but despite the cloak of self-delu- sion that clinS on in many MotoGP pit garages, there is really only one Rossi in the big- ger series anyway. None of the guys in MotoGP for the last fve years have been truly close to him when you look at the ,ina.l points tables. (Okay, l'll give you Sete Gibernau in 2004. but he was still beaten by almost tlvo clear races). lndirectly, Rossi's endless and infinitely transferable brilliance has finally persuad- ed even Honda that most of the riders who have pifted themselves against the "Tavullia Tornado" (sorry Colin ... ) really are not going to beat him over a season. Yet again. That has now made some of these riders - after many "not quite" sea- sons - expendable. It does not, however, mean that the best of these outgoing riders are some- how suddenly no good - not capable of beating even "vale" every now and then. machinery age or experience. Such was the lesson of the 2005 season, with seven different race winners, despite the final Troy Corser/Chris Vermeulen domination, Forget the possible BiagSi and Barros hop, skip and iump onto new streetbike- derived pommel horses; the conlirmed 28 riders in the World Superbike series for 2006 are now very much packed into the higher end of the quality band, As we've said before. no Valentinos in there for sure, but face statistical facts: even three-year full-factory HRC veteran Nicky Hayden isn't in that league yet. A good (if mildly cruel) litrnus test of how sharp the alent level is in SBK 2006 is to try and work out who will finish in the bottom positions of the linal championship table, sion, and is expected to miss the lirst cou- ple of flyawap for budget reasons anyway. The more you look at the list of names, the more you see a correlation between World Superbike 2005 and the pr.rre tal- enr magnet that MotoGP was, after its evolution to four-strokes. They are on a different level of course, but the idea is the same. Following the hysterical excite- ment of a whole new set of four-stroke rules, set in carved oriental characters on tablets of titanium, a va5t increase in fac- tory investment and machine diversity, and a full complement of franchised pri- vate teams, the lineup when l"lotocP went four-stroke was like a who's who of World Championship success in the previ- ous few years- MotoGP 250cc GB EOSTEUM OE HOSP'TAL Bv GonooN Rtrcxtr CYCLE NEWS . JANUARY 25, 2006 79 \ { t. i D .\ D ,l 't'l- :qr '' t- I t. I I

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