The Italian round of the WorldSBK season marks the end of the opening third of the season, but it’s hard to see how it marks the end of Chaz Davies’ dominance at the Imola circuit.
The Welshman has been a wizard around the technical circuit in recent years, and been unbeatable. Having fallen 30 points adrift of Jonathan Rea in the standings, he will know that this weekend it is crucial to chip into the Northern Irishman’s title lead.
Making predictions for races in WorldSBK 2018 can be a fool’s errand. The form book has been thrown out the window on a couple of occasions, and at the Assen TT Circuit that was certainly the case once again.
The opening three rounds of WorldSBK have shown that the new regulations have helped close the field and improve the racing, but also that Kawasaki and Ducati are still the class of the field.
The green and red bikes are unbeaten through six races, but Aragon showed that the balance of power could shift from one circuit to another.
Six races into a new era of WorldSBK, and it seems as though we have seen a lot has changed, without anything changing.
Ducati and Kawasaki are still doing the winning, with Yamaha the only manufacturer to upset the podium homogeneity enjoyed by the leading manufacturers.
If the second round of the 2018 WorldSBK season is anything to go by the regulation shake-up could see an absolutely compelling season. Buriram gave plenty to talk about!
The opening WorldSBK round of the year showed that the regulations have helped to shake up the order but the real test will be in the coming rounds.
Buriram, host of the Thai Round of WorldSBK, has been a Kawasaki stomping ground in recent years, and while the green machines will be favorites once again, the effect of the changes could see their wings clipped.
For the 2018 WorldSBK season, we are changing up our coverage format a little bit from last year, in order to provide more useful content for our racing fans.
First up, we are pleased to have Steve English providing coverage from the World Superbike paddock. Regular Asphalt & Rubber readers will recognize Steve’s name from a number of stories here on A&R, and he is also a regular host of our Paddock Pass Podcast.
With his day job being the voice of WorldSBK on the commentary feed, Steve’s expert insight will provide for us a preview of each WorldSBK round, as well as a debrief at the end of each race weekend, which will highlight the major takeaways from the racing action.
Additionally for our A&R Pro readers, Steve will be providing us with added racing analysis, as well as interviews with the WorldSBK riders, team members, and paddock fixtures, which you won’t want to miss. -JB
With that out of the way, let’s get to the opening round of the 2018 WorldSBK season, which is now in the books and certainly provided us with plenty of excitement and plenty to talk about.
The 2018 WorldSBK season is just around the corner, and Asphalt & Rubber has you covered for the latest within the paddock. After a winter of change for the WorldSBK paddock, normality will resume with the opening round of the season.
The biggest technical shake-up in series history should ensure closer competition throughout the field and the goal is to ensure that Jonathan Rea and Kawasaki are given a stern test throughout the campaign.
With rev limits imposed on a manufacturer by manufacturer basis, the performance weighting of each bike can be adjusted throughout the season.
The changes have been criticised by some Kawasaki brass recently, but for Rea the changes are a source of motivation.
Episode 64 of the Paddock Pass Podcast sees Steve English, and David Emmett on the mics in Spain, as they were in attendance at the Jerez test for WorldSBK and MotoGP.
While there, the boys got a chance to recap the 2017 World Superbike Championship season, where they talked about the big trends that we saw in production superbike racing this year.
Of course Jonathan Rea’s dominance is a major topic of discussion, but attention is also given on the show to the progress made by Pata Yamaha, the superior performance put in by Leon Camier and MV Agusta, and the championship battle that Ducati waged with Chaz Davies and Marco Melandri.
The episode is a quick show, and we will have more WorldSBK content for you in the off-season. Until then, keep an eye out for next week too, as we’ll have an in-depth MotoGP recap show for you.
As always, be sure to follow the Paddock Pass Podcast on Facebook, Twitter and subscribe to the show on iTunes and SoundCloud – we even have an RSS feed for you. If you like the show, we would really appreciate you giving it a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!
Our third and final installment (be sure to read the first and second installments as well) in a three-part look at the rule changes made to the World Superbike Championship for the 2018 season. Today we get the perspective of WorldSBK champion Jonathan Rea, the rider with the most to lose from the new rules.
Three years of unparalleled success has seen Jonathan Rea notch up 39 victories, 70 podiums, and 3 WorldSBK titles.
To put those numbers into context, only Carl Fogarty, Troy Bayliss, and Noriyuki Haga have won more races in their WorldSBK careers. It truly has been a historic run of form for Rea and Kawasaki.
For WorldSBK though the achievements have been outweighed by the reaction of fans to these results.
Feeling that significant changes were needed to ensure a more competitive balance for the field, WorldSBK has introduced a wide range of new regulations to curtail the Kawasaki dominance.
The goal isn’t to stop Rea and Kawasaki winning but simply to allow other manufacturers to get on an even keel.
The first installment in a three-part look at the rule changes made to the World Superbike Championship for the 2018 season (be sure to read the second and third installments as well), today we get an overview of the new WorldSBK rulebook, and its likely effects.
The opening round of the 2018 World Superbike season may be 100 days away, but the race to get ready for Phillip Island has begun in earnest.
The majority of the paddock are in the south of Spain, commencing winter testing at Jerez, and there is certainly a lot of work to be done.
The biggest single change in the history of the series will see widespread changes to the technical regulations. The headline act has been the introduction of mandated, and variable, rev limits for each manufacturer in a bid to curtail the dominance enjoyed by Kawasaki and Ducati in recent years.
FIM WorldSBK Technical Director, Scott Smart, was the man tasked with writing the framework for the new look regulations. The Englishman has rewritten the book on Superbike regulations in recent years and admitted that the biggest goal of the changes was to create a more balanced field.