Photos: © 2019 Stephen McClements – All Rights Reserved
It is a busy weekend in the motorcycle racing world, with both WorldSBK and MotoGP on track. From Donington Park, we have Stephen McClements once again on the ground, bringing us photos from the World Superbike paddock.
While most of the WorldSBK season has been about the Ducati with Alvaro Bautista onboard, with some occasional surprises by Jonathan Rea and his Kawasaki, today at Donington Park the talk was all about Tom Sykes and the BMW S1000RR.
While the MotoGP paddock was busy in Austin, Texas dealing with the rain, the WorldSBK riders were contending with their own weather, as the snow halted racing activities on Saturday.
Thankfully, the Sunday brought better weather, and WorldSBK racing fans were treated to the show that the richly deserved.
Assen is perhaps one of the most revered tracks on the World Superbike Championship schedule, even after changes to the circuit removed some of its best turns.
The Cathedral always provides good racing, and this outing was no different, including a photo-finish with local hero Michael van der Mark.
Helping us relive the magic is photographer Stephen McClements, with this ample gallery of WorldSBK photos from The Netherlands. We hope you enjoy them!
That’s it! That is a wrap from Phillip Island and the opening round of the WorldSBK Championship season. It was a good showing for superbike racing, with a shakeup in the order of things.
The narrative for 2019 very much looks to continue the Ducati vs. Kawasaki trend from the last few seasons, but the list of riders who could be in the hunt has certainly widened.
The new Superpole Race format seems to be a hit as well, with the sprint race showing itself to be a gloves-off affair amongst the riders, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering that there are points and grid position on the line.
Phillip Island is always a wild card when it comes to predicting the season, and the next round in Thailand should give us more bearing on the state of the series, but we like what we see so far.
Speaking of which, we like what we see from Stephen McClements’ select photos from Australia on Sunday. Give them a look and enjoy!
Photos: © 2019 Stephen McClements – All Rights Reserved
Shooting Saturday’s practice sessions and the first race of the 2019 season, Stephen brings us our first glimpse of superbike racing action this year.
We won’t hit you with any spoilers, but if the rest of the season pans out like Race 1 did on Saturday, WorldSBK fans are in for quite a treat this year.
Photos: © 2019 Stephen McClements – All Rights Reserved
We have two Steves in Phillip Island this weekend for the WorldSBK, and for this gallery we are featuring the work of Mr. Stephen McClement. Shooting Friday’s practice sessions, Stephen brings us our first on-track glimpses of the 2019 season in proper.
The day’s activities saw Alvaro Bautista keeping his top spot from the testing days, but he only leads Jonathan Rea by a narrow margin of 0.014 seconds. Leon Haslam is in the charge as well, just 0.155 seconds back himself, while Lowes and Camier were closer to half a second back.
Chaz Davies finds himself surprisingly over a second behind his teammate, which doesn’t bode well for his championship. Though, we have many, many laps still to come from the season-opener.
And also, we have many more photos from Stephen still to come. Until then, enjoy this modest selection.
Photos: © 2019 Stephen McClements – All Rights Reserved
Our friend and photographer Stephen McClements was recently out at the Southern 100, that other road race that’s held each year at the Isle of Man.
Set in the scenic town of Castletown, the Southern 100 doesn’t run on the famous TT course, instead racers compete on the Billown Circuit.
Though it’s not as famous as the Isle of Man TT, the Southern 100 still manages to attract some recognizable names from the TT and Irish road racing championship.
For instance, this year’s race saw entries from Michael Dunlop, Dave Molyneux, Dean Harrison, Ivan Lintin, Dan Kneen, and James Cowton.
Stephen brought Asphalt & Rubber some great high-resolution photographs from the 2016 Southern 100, we hope you enjoy them, after the jump (above: Dan Kneen at the Church Bends stone wall).