Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/393685
IN THE WIND P26 "Everyone at Yoshimura Suzu- ki is pleased to welcome Blake to the team," said Yoshimura Suzuki team manager Mike Webb. "He has shown tremendous talent in the 250 class in both Motocross and Supercross. After just a few weeks of testing the Yoshimura Suzuki RM-Z450, he has the po- tential to be extremely competi- tive in the premier 450 class. The whole Yoshimura Suzuki team is looking forward to helping Blake live up to his potential in 2015." WORLD SUPERBIKES 2015 D aniel Carrera, the World Su- perbike director for Dorna, gave an update on the potential shape and size of the 2015 World Superbike calendar, after the disappointments of the current season, which was scheduled to be 14 rounds long but only made it to 12. "The reality is that with Thailand we are quite close, we are going there in two weeks, for the race- track homologation and to finalize the contract," said Carrera. "We are quite close and everything says it will be concluded in this next visit. Chile is a different situ- ation because they are ready to sign and present guarantees to us, but obviously the other part is the racetrack. They want to use an existing racetrack facility and make the improvements to make a racetrack that can be homolo- gated. If we are able to close the agreement, and it is included in the calendar, it will be included as 'subject to homologation.' They will need time to finish the work, which means that if they are in the calendar they will be at the last part of the season. Maybe just before Qatar." Carrera confirmed that plug- ging the long gap at the start of the season, between the opener at the end of February in Austra- lia, to the first race in Europe in April, is a priority, as is saving the teams money by combining two flyaway rounds. "The idea from Thailand is to double up with Phillip Island and that will be con- firmed if we can also have South Africa also in March," he said. "If we are not able to have that then Thailand will be moved to the middle of March to not have this big gap between Australia and Aragon. Ideally it would be Phillip Island, then Thailand right after, and then two weeks later South Africa at the end March and then two weekends later Aragon." Even though the provisional MotoGP calendar is out already, it will be some time before the World Superbike version is avail- able to all. "We now have a contractual situation where some of the circuits have a deadline to con- firm some of the parameters of the contracts in the last week of October," Carrera said. "So, this is why until the second week of November we will not be able to release the calendar. MotoGP is set, but still provisional. We have some venues that want to change the date [in World Su- perbike] so we are moving all the pieces to find the way. In Sepang they are trying to move the date. It is the Ramadan period, which Dorna's Daniel Carrera says the World Superbike schedule won't be out until the end of October. PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLD & GOOSE