The opening round of the WSB championship was held in Phillip Island, Australia yesterday. The first race of the year saw Eugene Laverty (Suzuki) take the win ahead of Marco Melandri (Aprilia) in second and Sylvain Guintoli (also of Aprilia) in third place.
Race 2 was won by Guintoli, who was followed home by the Kawasaki teammates Loriz Baz in second and Tom Sykes in third.
After one round, Guintoli has the points lead in the championship. For additional details, results and points visit the official WSB site.
It sure looks like Buell should have spent another year in development before starting in WSB. Last place in both races, and over 5 seconds per lap off the pace in qualifying. I’m sure they can develop their way to being better than that, but it doesn’t help to get lapped as far as marketing goes.
Not sure why they picked A Yates to pilot the bike if they wanted to showcase it on the world stage. He was great in his time, but being off over a year with the bad fracture, and his size (he is probably the largest superbike guy I’ve seen on the paddock) doesn’t help. Too bad about Geoff May. Want to see how he does on the bike.
The WSB site seems to have full races this year, can anyone confirm?
… and Aaron Yates on the EBR. Lapped in race 1, and down 5 seconds a lap to the top 5 bikes. Nowhere to go but up, right?
Is that right? Bummer for EBR…..just goes to show, after decades of refining their racing craft the major manufacturing are in a world of their own.
And then MV comes along…..
You can watch WSB on the BE IN SPORT channel. It is channel 392 on Dish Network. The coverage is live most of the time.
The option that I have in the USA is BeIn Sport. Covered the WSBK last season so I can only assume they will this season. Unfortunately, I didn’t see it get recorded by my DVR so I may have to reprogram it.
Any options to watch on TV in USA this year?
Only option I know is to watch it in Youtube. The “Nascar” channel Fox, formerly Speed, does not air the races anymore, hopefully they will air the Motogp…
Go Sylvain! Saw an article in a Brit MC mag where he was reviewing the street RSV4, sounds like a very cool guy.
Aprilia did great at Phillip Island last year, so we still have the rest of the year to see how this goes.
But, is it just me, or does it seem the gremlin that caused so many mechanical DNF’s to Eugene Laverty in SSP and his previous seasons in SBK follow him to Suzuki? He would have been a world champ 1 or 2 times already if it wasn’t for mechanicals that plague his career. hate to see that happen to what seems like a really cool guy.
So we know the Aprilia is a good machine. So many guys going fast on it. Power. Electronics. Stability. Let’s see if they can do the same in MotoGP. Are scooters financing their superbikes? Does that help sell scooters? Be interesting to see how a bored out VFR would go.
I would say it (racing image) does sell Aprilia’s scooters. Kids love it, if their parents can afford it. Unfortunately the market is pretty depressed and at the lower end the price competition in fierce.