For the 2010 World Superbike season, Aprilia is looking to build upon their successful 2009 season, which saw Max Biaggi finishing 4th despite the RSV4’s first outing in WSBK racing. While the 2009 factory Aprilia team ran no title sponsorhip, that’s all set to change in 2010 with the announcement that Italian airline Alitalia will be headlining on the teams livery.
The 2010 World Superbike Championship series is only two weeks away from its season opener at Phillip Island, and to help get the Superbike juices flowing for race fans, WSBK has put together a video that highlights moments from the 2009 season and an update on riders and teams for the 2010 season.
If only we could get coverage of WSBK this good on the television back here in the States. At 22 minutes long, this is a video well worth watching with beverage and food within arms’ reach. Enjoy the season preview after the jump.
Roger Lee Hayden, younger brother to former MotoGP World Champion Nicky Hayden, has signed with Team Pedercini for the 2010 World Superbike season. Roger Lee rode the Kawasaki ZX-6R to an AMA Supersport Championship, so theoretically he should feel at home again on Team Green satellite team in WSBK. However, the liter-bike class has proven difficult for the younger Hayden. In his three years on the Factory Kawasaki AMA Superbike team, two of those years were shortened by serious crashes.
It’s been confirmed that Davide Tardozzi will indeed move down the World Superbike paddock, and into the BMW’s WSBK effort for the next three years. The Italian team manager was at the center of some controversy after rider Noriyuki Haga failed to win the 2009 World Superbike Championship by a handful of points.
Some critics inside and outside of the paddock chastised Tardozzi for not implementing team orders, which would have kept Xerox Ducati teammate Michel Fabrizio from capturing valuable points that Haga would later need in the series.
Part of being a motorcycle enthusiast in the United States means waking up at odd hours to catch live coverage of your favorite racing series. Whether it be MotoGP, WSBK, or AMA, every racing Sunday is more like Easter Sunday as we hunt through the channel listings looking for our beloved sport on the television, sometimes finding the disappointment that the coverage has been pushed far back into the week as far as Wednesday.
For the motorcycle racing fanatics, this sort of Easter egg hunt is a ritual intrinsically tied to our love of two-wheeled racing. Thankfully, 2009 provided us some worthy racing treasures for all our efforts, and it is in this post we celebrate those moments.
In 140 characters or less, Mat Mladin has signaled that he won’t be jumping to WSBK anytime soon. Linked to Reitwagen’s satellite BMW racing effort, Mladin’s possible seat on the team went to Andrew Pitt just last week. Mladin created some buzz with his tweet two weeks ago, which hinted that the ex-AMA racer was considering making the transition to World Superbike racing.
A reliable source in the AMA has just tipped us off to the fact that Ben Bostrom has signed with Pat Clark Motorsports (PCM) for the 2010 season. PCM, which has been linked to Bostrom since the beginning of the month, is keeping the deal under wraps though as they try to sign both Jake Zemeke and John “Hopper” Hopkins to the team as well. If successful, this would mean PCM is building the Deathstar of AMA Superbike teams for the 2010 AMA season.
UPDATE: Andrew Pitt has confirmed that he has signed with Reitwagen Racing for the 2010 WSBK season.
After BMW added a satellite team to World Superbike, the German team, Reitwagen Racing, was expected to have Austrian Roland Resch at the helm of one of the team’s S1000RR bikes, with a second bike rumored to be still open.
A week later, Mat Mladin shook things up in WSBK, after he tweeted that he was contemplating an offer to ride in the World Superbike Championship. After this news, links began to be made between Mladin and Reitwagen Racing program.
Any hopes of the Australian AMA champion riding the Bavarian machine though seem to be dashed now though, as fellow Australian Andrew Pitt is expected to take up the second seat on the satellite squad instead of Mladin.
After having five strong years, Stiggy Honda has announced that it will be withdrawing from the 2010 World Superbike and World Supersport Championships. Despite the team’s successes, their financial situation is the cause of their undoing, with Stiggy squarely pointing the finger at partner S2 Racing.
After announcing his retirement from AMA Pro Racing, and what many assumed meant motorcycle racing in general, it didn’t take long for Mat Mladin to wind back up in the racing spot-light, this time with World Superbike aires around him. It would seem the recently retired Australian rider is at least musing over a possible World Superbike ride this week, as was revealed in a post on twitter earlier today. Citing a couple of offers, Mladin seems to be at least interested in one of them. More after the jump.
There’s be some trouble brewing in the MotoGP/WSBK camp after news hit that MotoGP would be switching back to a 1000cc format by the 2012 season. In that story, several possibilities on how that format would work were put forth by various sides, one such proposal being the running of production based motors in MotoGP.
These motors, which would be based off those found on streetbikes, could be tuned to any degree, provided it met the criteria in the MotoGP rule book (1000cc & four-cylinders are the only regulations agreed upon currently). This news of course drew the ire of World Superbike promoter, Infront Motor Sports, in the form of Paolo Flammini, who believes that format would infringe on his license to exclusively run a production based race series.
Refusing at first to define what a production engine is, Dorna’s Carmelo Ezpeleta is now switching gears and saying the term “production engine” won’t even appear in the new MotoGP racing regulations.