Shinya Nakano

A variety of sources are reporting that "Super" Shinya Nakano wiil announce his retirement from competition at a press conference in Japan tomorrow. Nakano, who raced for the Factory Aprilia team in WSBK this past season, had some good finishes but was plagued by injuries in the latter portion of the year. The highlight of  Nakano's twelve year career on the world scene was probably his 2000 season on the Chesterfield Tech 3 Yamaha 250, where he narrowly lost the 250cc world championship to teammate Olivier Jacque in a near photo finish at the season-ending race at Phillip Island.

Shinya Nakano has decided to sit out the last World Superbike races of the season, citing the neck injury that has kept the Japanese rider out of the last two rounds. Nakano says that the injury isn't too debilitating in real life but didn't think that he was up to the strain of traveling from Japan and enduring the stress of racing speeds for three days. While there is currently no official evidence that this pull-out was actually a management move on Aprilia's part, a cynical person might speculate that the decision was not Nakano's alone, given the persistent rumors that he will no longer race for Aprilia in 2010.

UPDATE

Gpone has confirmed this commentator's conjecture that the decision for "Super" Shinya Nakano not to race at Portimao was not Nakano's. In fact, Nakano had flown from Japan and was at the Paris airport when he got the news. Although Nakano hasn't exactly set the world on fire this year he has done creditably well on occasion and the injury problems that he has suffered have limited his effectiveness. One has to wonder why Aprilia would handle this situation in such a bush-league manner.

British site Visordown.com is reporting that the last two British Superbike champions, Leon Camier and Shane "Shakey" Byrne, will reunite  on a team that will campaign the Aprilia RSV4. Speculation has been rife that the Italian manufacturer would increase their presence in the series in 2010 and Aprilia PR flack Alain Roger stated as much recently in an interview with Caradisiac.com. Byrne and Camier were teammates on the Airwaves Ducati team in 2008, the year that Byrne won the BSB championship. That championship paved the way for Byrne's current ride with Sterilgarda Ducati, a relationship that hasn't gone exactly as planned. Byrne, speaking on Onthethrottle.com has said that he has two offers in 2010 and it has been assumed that he would sign with Paul Bird Kawaski. However, with PBM's recent signing of soon to be ex-Rizla Suzuki rider Chris Vermuelen, it would appear that the postion of lead rider has been filled on the green team.

Friday started out sunny and clear, but by the end of the day we had huge clouds and even some lightning in the distance. Fortunately, no rain arrived before the final session, but there is a chance of thundershowers tomorrow. Miller is set in a valley surrounded by mountains, and even in late May some snow remains on the highest spots. As the clouds gathered in the distance, the setting grew more and more spectacular.

Several riders from the AMA Pro Superbike series are here on wild card rides. Jake Zemke made his WSBK debut last season, but now is filling in for injured Stiggy Honda rider John Hopkins. Hopper is here this weekend and looking pretty fit. He should return soon.

Another notable AMA rider is Melissa Paris, wife of Josh Hayes, who recently ended Yoshimura's 55-win streak at Infineon Raceway. Paris is competing in the Supersport class and making a respectable showing so far.

The World Superbike season has barely started, and already the controversy has started. The first blow was landed before the first race had even started: Alstare Suzuki team boss Francis Batta complained to the Italian press that the Aprilia RSV4 that Max Biaggi used to grab the runner up spot in Superpole was illegal. "The Aprilia is a prototype, and as such, is not allowed to race here in SBK. We will wait until after the race to make a formal complaint," he told the Italian broadcaster La7.

In the hours since the race, word of any official protest being lodged is yet to emerge, and so the statements made by Batta should probably be put down to the flamboyant Belgian's hot temper, rather than a genuine statement of intent. And given the results of Sunday's two Superbike races, where both Max Biaggi and Shinya Nakano finished outside the top 10, Batta may have decided to keep his powder dry, and wait for a more opportune moment.

But even if the Alstare boss does go ahead with his complaint, it is likely to fall on deaf ears. The Aprilia RSV4 1000 Factory has been homologated and approved by the FIM, making them officially legal in World Superbikes. According to Twowheelsblog.com, Batta's complaints center around the Aprilia's fuel injection system, which Alstare mechanics are claiming is the system as homologated. According to the FIM rules, the race bikes must use the same fuel injection system as used on the homologated machine. But any violation would be immediately apparent once the scrutineers get their hands on the machines at the technical inspection.

The brand new Superpole format adopted by World Superbikes for the 2009 season threw up a great many conundrums at Phillip Island on Saturday, as well as a few surprises. But perhaps most of all, it also threw up confirmation of what some had suspected, and many had hoped.

The format is relatively simple, and borrowed from Formula 1:

1. The 20 riders who set the fastest times during the two ordinary qualifying practice sessions go through to the new Superpole;
2. At the end of the afternoon, Superpole is run, consisting of three 12 minute sessions, with a 7 minute break between the sessions. The riders are given two qualifying tires, which they can use at any time during any of the three Superpole sessions. But only two super-soft qualifiers spread over three sessions means that they will have to use race tires only in at least one of the sessions;
3. At the end of the first Superpole session, the 4 slowest riders are excluded, and grid positions 17 through 20 assigned in order of time;
4. At the end of the second Superpole session, the 8 slowest riders are excluded, and grid positions 9 through 16 are awarded in order of the time set in the second session;
5. In the third and final Superpole session, the 8 remaining riders compete against each other in a straightforward fight for grid positions, with places awarded based on the times set in this third and final session.

Easily understandable, but the subtleties and difficulties arise in the interplay between the number of qualifying tires and Superpole sessions. And those subtleties claimed their first victims in the very first session: both BMWs failed to make it through to the second session, after gambling on a soft race tire, and saving their qualifiers for later on. As it happened, neither Ruben Xaus nor Troy Corser ended up using them, the race tires leaving them just short of making the cut. They were joined by Roberto Rolfo and Tommy Hill, Hill victim of an earlier blown engine, and not enough laps to set a fast time. 

After MotoGP went four stroke, there was never any doubt about which was the premier class of motorcycle racing. Coinciding with the flight of the Japanese manufacturers from World Superbikes, the combination of Valentino Rossi's charisma and roaring, smoking, sliding 990cc bikes solidified the series' position as the pinnacle of two-wheeled racing which would brook no competition. But as the Japanese manufacturers started to slowly creep back into World Superbikes, and MotoGP switched to an 800cc capacity, the balance of power has started to shift. 

During the off-season, that movement has started to snowball: The combination of 35 entries in World Superbikes and Kawasaki's withdrawal from MotoGP has switched the spotlight from the Spanish-run series to the Italian-based championship. Once jokingly referred to as the Italian Open Championship, the ten nationalities which fill the 2009 World Superbike paddock has laid that old chestnut very forcefully to rest. World Superbikes are in the ascendancy, and with the might of the marketing organization which runs FIFA behind them, the Flammini brothers are preparing to take on the pomp of Carmelo Ezpeleta's Catalunyan power base. 

They have everything going for them: While Kawasaki was pulling out of MotoGP, two new manufacturers, BMW and Aprilia, were joining World Superbikes, with KTM warming up their RC8R in the supporting Superstock class. What's more, and probably more importantly, this season looks like being one of the most open contests there has been for a very long time. Ask one WSBK fan who they like for the title and they will give you a long list of favorites, and ask a couple more fans and you end up with a list of possible champions almost as big as the entire MotoGP field.

Top Dog

But force them to make a choice, and you soon whittle it down to a manageable list of names in with a serious chance of lifting the title this year. The bookies' favorite and heir apparent to Troy Bayliss' throne is Noriyuki Haga. The Japanese veteran is after all on Bayliss' bike, and as Haga came surprisingly close to preventing the Australian from running away on the factory Xerox Ducati last year, now that he's on the 1098R, he is surely a force to be reckoned with. The only problem with this scenario is Haga's undoubted ability to beat himself. Always fast, and always spectacular, too often Haga is also prone to throw the bike up the road, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. If Haga is to finally secure the championship he has been chasing for so many years, he will need to be a little more considered, and a little more consistent. 

For Haga has some very serious competition, from rookies and veterans, young riders and old. It is unusual for one rookie to be tipped for the title, but for three of them to be in the mix is truly remarkable. And it is a remarkable crop which will be entering World Superbikes this year. The newcomer whose name is generating the most debate is Ben Spies. The triple AMA superbike champion is revered in the US for beating the relentless Mat Mladin three years in a row, while elsewhere around the world, there is much scepticism about the depth of Spies' talent. Such doubts are understandable, as the AMA series gets very little exposure outside of North America, and it is perceived as a two-horse affair between whoever happens to be aboard the field-destroying Yoshimura Suzukis. 

The final World Superbike test before the season commences in under 7 days time started today, and it was another Max topping the timesheets at Phillip Island. This time, it was German Suzuki man Max Neukirchner who was fastest, just dipping underneath the time set by Max Biaggi on the Aprilia last week. Neukirchner led the factory Ducati of Michel Fabrizio and his Suzuki team mate Yukio Kagayama, with British rider Johnny Rea coming in 4th. The Yamaha riders were both new to the Phillip Island track, and were 7/10ths off Neukirchner's pace.

But the day was marked by crashes, with Fabrizio, Nori Haga and Troy Corser all hitting the dirt. Most serious of all, though, was Ten Kate Honda's Carlos Checa, who was taken to hospital for examination after apparently losing his memory of the crash. He was later released from hospital, but his participation in testing tomorrow is in doubt.

Local hero and former GP legend Garry McCoy was quickest of the Supersport riders, and 3/10ths quicker than his compatriot Ant West here last week. The BE1 Triumph rider finished ahead of the factory Yamahas of Cal Crutchlow and Fabien Foret. Ten Kate's two champions - and joint favorites for the title - Andrew Pitt and Kenan Sofuoglu were a couple of tenths behind McCoy's pace.

Testing continues tomorrow.

World Superbike

Dorna has been notoriously careful with the video footage of its races, and has spent a lot of time and effort getting races and fragments of races taken off of Youtube and other video sharing websites. Indeed, when an online publication such as ours applies for media accreditation for MotoGP races, we are issued with instructions explicitly forbidding us to shoot and use any moving image footage of the race. This is entirely understandable, as the lion's share of Dorna's income is from television broadcasters, and they expect a good deal of protection for the large sums of money they pay for the broadcast rights.

One sign that things are starting to change a little at Dorna was the opening earlier last year of the official MotoGP.com Youtube channel, which hosted various snippets of video from the MotoGP.com website, including the excellent After The Flag official video podcast. It was a start - a careful one, but a start nonetheless.

Now, though, bigger changes are afoot. Perhaps having learned from the World Superbike website, which hosts live video of the races on its website for free in most countries, MotoGP.com is now starting to put some of the old races online. The first race to go up is the complete footage of the 2008 Jerez race, which went up online earlier today. Whether this is the first of many, or just a one-off experiment remains to be seen. At the very least, it is a promising step.

Embedding of the video has been disabled, so you'll have to head on over to the MotoGP Youtube channel, and watch it online there.

The relative fortunes of MotoGP and World Superbikes seem to swing back and forth like a pendulum over the years. As the popularity and profile of one series wanes, the other seems to grow to take its place.

Since the advent of the 990cc MotoGP bikes - or perhaps since the advent of Valentino Rossi to the premier class, two years earlier - it has been MotoGP which has taken its turn in the sun, the coming of the four strokes causing an exodus of talent from the World Superbike class. This inflow of talent into MotoGP also coincided with a number of developments in World Superbikes which added to the decline of the production-based class. Michelin dominated the series, supplying only a handful of riders, and making the racing predictable. After FGSport, the organizers of the series, decided to go to a spec tire, handing the contract to Pirelli, the Japanese factories - already only sparsely represented - withdrew their support, leaving World Superbikes to make the epithet "Ducati Cup" even more deserved.

But as the implications of an earlier rule change upping the permitted capacity for four cylinder bikes to 1000cc started to tempt the Japanese factories back to the series, the racing started to improve. Then with the return to the series of Troy Bayliss in 2006, and the coming of Max Biaggi in 2007, the popularity of World Superbikes started to wax once again, soon threatening to eclipse MotoGP. World Superbikes' rise was helped along by the dismal racing produced by the new 800cc formula in MotoGP, as a combination of smaller engine capacity, much tighter fuel restrictions, and the arrival of a new breed of rider more interested in riding with surgical precision than engaging in armed combat saw the races become increasingly processional, and lose much of the element of competition.

And it isn't just the fans who are showing more interest in World Superbikes: Interest is growing in the MotoGP paddock as well. The latest round of speculation was started by Valentino Rossi, who, it transpired after the event, had tried and failed to arrange a wildcard appearance at the final round of the World Superbike series at the magnificent Portimao circuit in Portugal. He repeatedly expressed his admiration for the close racing which the World Superbike series throws up - though ironically, an unleased Troy Bayliss dominated both races in Portugal - and has repeatedly stated his desire to take part in a World Superbike race at some point in the future.

Since failing to get a wildcard at Portugal, Rossi changed tack, attempting to organize a showdown with - now retired - Troy Bayliss at one of the two opening World Superbike rounds at Qatar or Phillip Island. So far, Rossi has failed to get his way, with Ducati chief Davide Tardozzi currently the main fly in the ointment. Bayliss has expressed an interest (though at an asking fee of a million pounds, one that comes at a price), but has for the most part held off the boat. Meanwhile, both Ducati's Tardozzi and Yamaha's racing chief Laurens Klein Koerkamp have played down the possibility of such a clash, as it would cast a fairly substantial spanner in their carefully laid plans for both World Superbikes and MotoGP.

But Valentino Rossi's status both inside and outside of motorcycle racing means that what Rossi wants, Rossi usually gets, with only a very few exceptions in the past. As much as Yamaha would hate Rossi to be racing in March, and risking an injury which could seriously hamper his title defence, the chances of the Japanese factory actually preventing Rossi from racing in World Superbikes are vanishingly small. That would leave the small matter of Troy Bayliss' fee, but if World Superbike organizer IMS and MotoGP promoter Dorna are smart, they would put together a special TV deal for something likely to be billed as the greatest sporting event since Muhammad Ali took on George Foreman in the legendary "Rumble in the Jungle" in Zaire in 1974. Such an event could help elevate motorcycle racing to the levels of Formula 1 and beyond.