A quick look at the highlights of the premier class in the FIM Superbike World Championship for this year.
All pics & info courtesy of https://www.worldsbk.com/en
Firstly, and most importantly, it all kicks off this weekend at Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit, with the Grand Ridge Brewery Australian Round. Either we are going to have to braai through the night or hit the sack early so we can be up and ready at Sparrow’s. There are a total of 12 rounds with the final round happening on the weekend of 18 to 20 October in Jerez, Spain at the Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto, for the Prometeon Spanish Round. The middle of the year gets busy with July and August sporting two rounds each and September three rounds. Yeah, we think we are all going to be glued to our tellys this year with MotoGP and WSBK calendars filling up just about every single weekend.
There are some quite significant changes to the field this year with riders changing teams. Toprak Razgatlioglu shook things up quite a bit when he moved across to the ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team pits, which then sparked a bevy of somewhat surprising moves. Jonathan Rea’s move to the Pata Prometeon Yamaha Team was also a little bit of a surprise to some, seeing that his partnership with Kawasaki saw him take six titles. Andrea Iannone, one of our favourite riders debut’s in his rookie season with independent outfit Team GoEleven on a Ducati Panigale V4R and we really look forward to how “The Maniac” is going to shake things up even more.
Current reigning champ, Alvaro Bautista seems to have a worthy team mate in Bulega at Aruba.it Ducati, who is keeping him honest and pushing him to go faster at every turn. And Garret Gerlof, who for all intents and purposes was the fastest BMW for most of the season, gets Scott Redding as a team mate at Bonovo Action BMW from the ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team which should make for some interesting team dynamics. Axel Bassani joins Alex Lowes and now fills the seat vacated by Jonny Rea at Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK. Alex’s twin brother Sam Lowes joins the fray with Elf Marc VDS Racing Team. We’ve seen brothers racing brothers before but generally one is a bit older, a bit faster and a bit more senior in general, but with the twins they seem to be fairly equally matched and equally as ambitious, we are intrigued to see if blood is thicker than rivalry and championship points.
It is going to be a phenomenally exciting season of racing as everybody jostles for the spotlight and the podium to justify their moves.
