INTERVIEW
WORLD SUPERBIKE'S SCOTT SMART AND GREGORIO LAVILLA
P68
do this as World Championship
level, but not being too far away
from national level. We want to
make it something a manufac-
turer can say, "we can invest
now, because the production we
need to do for homologation will
be lower – and this is not going
to be only for one championship,
but for all the National Champion-
ships around the world."
This is the idea and now this
is what Scott, having all these in-
gredients in place, needs to find.
We want a good competition.
We have the product in World
Superbike and a solid founda-
tion now, but we need to know
if the direction we are going in is
correct. We will have this experi-
ence through the year. This is a
difficult task because we are not
only looking at our champion-
ship, but with support from some
other federations and National
Championships… At the end of
the day, and this is me just talk-
ing personally as an ex-rider,
all you were worried about was
somebody passing you because
he has more power than you. Or
maybe more electronics in the
past few years than you. Probably
our idea is to have something and
if the National Championships
can adopt it, perfect. If it is tuned
in a way that is not affecting their
competitiveness when they want
to join us. So we will give some-
thing that we think is fair and with
a control on the cost. Obviously,
we are the World Championship,
so we cannot put our level very
low down. It would be up to ev-
ery national federation to adapt to
that, or leave it as ours, and then
see [what happens].
SS: It is difficult to make one
set of rules for all different types
of bikes. Every single team has
a different opinion of what would
be a good direction to go in. We
need to keep all the manufactur-
ers in with a shout [a chance].
We want everybody to come here
and have a chance on a Sunday.
If you have one common rules
platform across all the National
Championships then you can
have a foundation back into the
World Superbike Championship.
If World Superbike and World Su-
persport have the same rules as
the National Championships then
you get the wild cards. If you are
a manufacturer and you know you
can build 'X' amount of race parts
and sell them into six different
championships, it is cost effec-
tive and you have a much wider
The Hero EBR
team made their
debut with Aaron
Yates (injured
teammate
Geoff May had
to withdraw) at
Phillip Island.
