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BMW Continues Changes in WSBK Team Structure

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After rumored and real strife at the end of the WSBK season, BMW Motorrad continues to rearrange their team structure. The team, according to a recent press release, has continued on with the restructuring. BMW Motorrad Motorsport announced Thursday that Rainer Bäumel is the new Head of Race Operations, after being the Technical Director, with Stephan Fischer Head of Development, and Josef Hofmann the Managing Director of the factory.  After leaving Ducati at the end of the 2009 season and signing on as team manager for BMW for the 2010 season and producing something a turnaround for the team, Davide Tardozzi either left or was forced out due to “different ideas regarding the structure of the team,” leaving Bernhard Gobmeier to named as BMW Motorrad Motorsport Director in October.

According to Gobmeier, Thursday’s announcement might just be the end of the restructuring, “In filling these three key positions we are concluding the restructuring of the team management.” He also noted that this “new formation is leaner and the division of labour more clearly delineated,” which is either a statement of the obvious or a bit of a slap to Tardozzi’s management style, since “All three report directly to…Gobmeier.”

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WSBK Reduces Number of Riders for Superpole in 2011

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Tucked away in the Friday press release from the World Superbike Commission, along with other changes to the technical and sporting regulations, was the news that only sixteen bikes would be eligible to compete in Superpole qualifying.  In the 2010 season, the fastest 20 riders during the qualifying practices competed to move on to Superpole 2 and 3 to vie for the pole position for the Sunday races.

With the lower numbers of entries this past season, many if not sometimes all of the riders gained entry into the first Superpole session.  This coming, 2011, season, only the sixteen fastest riders will be in the first session of Superpole, with the slowest four getting knocked out of the running for Superpole 2 (allowing the fastest twelve to move onto Superpole 2).

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World Superbike Starts Its Own Rookie Series

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The FIM and Infront Motorsports announced Wednesday the launch of its own European Junior Cup, a support series racing alongside the World Superbike series, for fourteen to seventeen year old riders. According to a press release from the FIM, “riders will compete on identical race prepared Kawasaki Ninja 250R motorcycles,” racing in the time between the two WSBK races at Assen, Monza, Aragon, Silverstone, Nurburgring, and Mangy-Cours.

Riders selected to compete will also attend a training camp before the season begins in Guadix, Spain. Riders will be eligible if they “have held a competition license for at least one year in either road racing, motocross, enduro, supermoto, trials or minimoto.”

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The World Superbike Calendar Fills Out

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After releasing a provisional calendar that left some venues to be determined, World Superbike has finally released its official schedule for the 2011 season. Leaving the European and Italian rounds empty back in October, we see Donington Park and Imola now official added to the roster. While the addition of the two historic circuits is certainly not the most surprising news, it atleast completes the WSBK calendar.

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Rumors

2012 Ducati Superbike: +20 HP/-20 lbs

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2011 marks the end of the current Ducati Superbike 1198 as we know it, and Ducati has been hard at work on the successor to the crown jewel in its model line-up. Undertaking the most expensive model design in the history of the company, Ducati has poured a ton of resources into its 2012 Superbike in order to make it a market leader. Recently stretching the faith of the Ducati loyal by introducing bikes like the Hypermotard, Multistrada 1200, and now the new Ducati Diavel that extend Ducati into non-racing segments, 2012 is the Bologna brand’s answer that it is heavily committed to its Superbike roots.

Starting from scratch with its design, the 2012 Ducati Superbike features two impressive performance figures: an additional 20hp (taking the Superbike up to 190hp), and a weight reduction of 20 lbs across the model line. Host to a bevy of street bike firsts, our Bothan Spies also tell us that the new Superbike is going to be a stunner.

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News

Donington Park Returns to the 2011 WSBK Calendar

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Good news for British motorcycle racing fans, as Donington Park has secured a spot on the 2011 World Superbike calendar. But the real good news for the Brits is that WSBK will come to both Donington and Silverstone next year, giving the sometimes rainy island a double-helping of production-based international motorcycle racing.

The announcement signals the rescue of the British track from what seemed like certain death, after planned renovations fell through and the track was unable to secure a Formula 1 bid, leaving the Donington Park leasees without a dime to spend, and without a track circuit to run (construction had begun to make the track conform to Formula 1 standards).

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Photos: BMW S1000RR WSBK Hits the Wind Tunnel

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As the BMW World Superbike team prepares for the 2011 season, Leon Haslam and Troy Corser took a break from their training regiment to spend some time in BMW’s wind tunnel facility in Bavaria. Looking to hone the maximum performance out of the S1000RR, both riders worked on their optimal streamlined body positions in speeds up to 150 mph. The BMW WSBK team also looked at the S1000RR’s fairing, examining how to optimize the bike’s Cx or coefficient of drag (we assume any modifications that were made were WSBK legal of course).

The team will get to test its results later this month in Jerez, and in the meantime Haslam and Corser will be shipped off to a BMW fitness training bootcamp with fellow BMW riders James Toseland and Ayrton Badovini from the BMW Italia squad, along with members of the BMW Enduro team. We don’t like the sound of this training camp, but BMW has given us 12 high-quality shots of the S1000RR in the wind tunnel, which we enjoyed.

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Ruben Xaus to Ten Kate Honda

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After being booted from the BMW factory World Superbike team at the end of the season, Spaniard Ruben Xaus has landed himself a new job with the Ten Kate Honda WSBK squad. The Captain of Crash in the 2010, Xaus and the BMW S1000RR seemingly couldn’t come to an accord on the fastest way around the race track, which often resulted in Xaus ending up on wrong side of the gravel traps.

With murmurs starting early in the season that the WSBK veteran would be given the boot, there was little fanfare or surprise when Xaus was replaced by Leon Haslam in the BMW World Superbike team for the 2011 season. Finding a place in the Ten Kate Honda team, Xaus in many ways is moving up in the WSBK paddock, as Ten Kate’s Honda CBR1000RR has been consistently competitive in World Superbike racing. Xaus will join Johnny Rea for the 2011 season, where the duo will fight again for the World Championship. The season’s opening round will be Xaus’s 200th start in World Superbike.

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Kawasaki Fielding Three-Man Team in World Superbike: Lascorz, Sykes, and Vermeulen

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Kawasaki, along with most of the WSBK grid, it at Aragon this week testing for the 2011 World Superbike season. Confirming that they’ll run a three-man team next year, Kawasaki has been testing with Joan Lascorz and Tom Sykes, while the injured Christopher Vermeulen has been spotted around the paddock. Kawasaki has retained Sykes and Vermeulen from the 2010 season, while bringing up Lascorz from the World Supersport class. The team, which is being managed by Paul Bird Motorsports, will of course will be running the all-new 2011 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R. Rider quotes after the jump.

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Toseland’s Fall from Grace – Signs with Satellite BMW Team

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It wasn’t that long ago (2007 actually) that James Toseland was on top of the world, handily winning the 2007 World Superbike Championship on his Ten Kate Honda CBR1000RR. However the British rider has had nothing but a string of bad luck since his WSBK domination, entering MotoGP in 2008 with the Tech3 Yamaha team, and then back into WSBK with the factory-backed Sterilgarda Yamaha squad in 2010. Toseland failed to impress his rookie season in MotoGP, and his second-season toss-up with Colin Edwards over their crew chief swap didn’t seem to help matters much either.

Bumped out of the squad by American Ben Spies, JT was in World Superbike this last season, where many expected to see the part-time pianist play another tarantella of victories in the series. The Yamaha R1 had been the bike to have in the 2009 season, and Toseland was after all a former WSBK Champion; but the results didn’t materialize, and JT finished the season 9th, nearly 100 points behind his rookie Teammate Cal Crutchlow, who will be in Tech3 Yamaha for the 2011 season. The last man left standing in the silly season round of musical chairs, Toseland will see his stature in WSBK further slide into oblivion as he now joins the Italian satellite BMW squad for 2011.

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2011 World Superbike Official Test Dates Announced

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The World Superbike season may be over, but testing for 2011 is about to get underway, and Infront Motorsports has released its official testing schedules. Leading into the 13-round 2011 Superbike World Championship, the first official testing session will be at Portimao. For WSBK and WSS, tesing will start on Wednesday January 26th, while the the 1000 & 600 Supertock series will start Tuesday January 27th. Testing will conclude for everyone on Friday the 28th.

The second testing session will be held at Phillip Island, which will also be the first venue of the 2011 season. Testing at Phillip Island for all the series will start Monday February 21st, and end Tuesday the 22nd. These dates are in addition to the unofficial testing sessions, which have been scheduled by the teams themselves.

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