A productive, if not perfect, weekend for Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki) saw him stretch his championship points lead over Alvaro Bautista (Ducati) to 81 points. Rea managed to win two of the three races this weekend (while finishing second in the remaining race) while Bautista crashed in both Race 1 and the Superpole race – ultimately injuring his shoulder which caused him to pull out of Race 2.
In the first race on Saturday, Rea was followed home by Chaz Davies (Ducati) and Toprak Razgatlioglu (Kawasaki) in second and third place respectively, while Rea won Sunday’s Superpole race over Davies in second and Tom Sykes (BMW) in third.
The second big race of the weekend was this afternoon, and Davies won his first race of the year convincingly over Rea in second and Razgatlioglu in third. You will find full results for Race 1 here, the Superpole race here and Race 2 here. For additional details and points, visit the official WSB site.
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Why post?
Watch bikes go around a track? Not exactly what I want to do on a nice afternoon. Racing has never been something the majority of us want to watch, NASCAR notwithstanding and NASCAR is like watching paint dry unless you’re in it for the possible crashes and who in their right mind wants that?
Sportbikes/repli-racers are not exactly something that can be safely used on public roads (here come the whines from the kids, LOL!) and most people don’t do track days. Apparently they’d rather risk their fellow motorists lives by “dicing” through traffic rather than take it to the more controlled environment of a racetrack. That said, these professional riders are a talented bunch and I wish them good luck!
There are quite a few differences on these bikes not the least being the tires. I remember an article a year or so ago, that talked about the Perelli tires being faster but having a bigger fall off and the actual total race time was very similar. Not sure if that still holds true. That said, the Moto America race was much more entertaining overall than the world superbike race to be honest
It is becoming apparent now that Alvaro’s initial domination was down to the power of the motogp derived Panigale V4 motor. He used the grunt of the motor to pull ahead and check out of the pack, then was on cruise control mode till the end of the race.
Now that the rpm of the V4 has been curtailed, and all the bikes are mostly on equal power, it’s down to the rider’s still to pilot the bike to the front. Looks like Alvaro, even with his motogp experience, is no better in riding skill than the regular wsbk riders, and making too many mistakes when challenged.
The additional power was never the reason. At the time he was dominating, he won by too great a margin and the other 3 riders on the same bike struggled to finish top-10. Now Davies has a win and Rea is back up front. He just hit the “magic setup” while everyone else was still working toward it.
Wasn’t the RPM drop only 250 rpm? This is not THAT much of a clamp. AB is just making mental errors in which crashes don’t equal points. If all of the Ducati riders were up front, then I could understand. If anything, the Kaw has a higher % of their bikes up front than Ducati.
There is a reason AB is not in MGP, and folks are seeing it now.
You can thank DeiselGP for sucking the life out of road racing.
I thought Moto America changed the rules so that American superbikes would be on par with world superbikes. If so, our boys are way off the pace, being 2 to 3 seconds per lap slower than the blood sausage and bratwurst crowd. Our fastest qualifier would have qualified 16th in the world superbike class. Bit of a bruiser up the star spangled arse.
Both organizations have separately changed their rules to make the class more economical to race. AMA seem to have changed them more so.
I remember when Matt Mladin tested at Phillip Island while the WSBK guys also tested and went faster than they did.
The industry needs more RC390s and ninja 400’s. 600 and 1000 Repli-Racers are awesome bikes, but waaay too expensive for the young guy/gal that gets excited when one flies past them. Sanctioning bodies and OEMs have pidgeonholed sportbikes so badly, it’s not even funny.
Edit: I was trying to reply to Randy
that’s exactly why the sport died. Nobody wants to see a 600 supersport race(let alone a 400) with a bunch of club racers and no major mfg. sponsorship……If the younger gen can afford mustangs,camaro’s, subaru STI’s ect ect. then they can afford 1000cc superbikes. There is something else missing and I can’t seem to figure it out.
Not much of a mystery. For the most part, Millennials still want and need cars, and smartphones, and apps on their smartphones that they can enjoy in their cars. Millennials don’t need motorcycles, and they sure don’t need the sky-high insurance premiums that come with being a Millennial on a financed sportbike.
They usually can’t afford both, so something has to go, and it’s not going to be their phones or their cars.
sad, I can remember when American AMA superbike was more exciting than any international races.
Agree! Moto America should adopt BSBK or WSBK rules. It would be interesting to see if volumes of similar spec bikes globally would reduce the costs of bikes. Wasn’t the reason almost all the Mfrs pulled out of USA racing was they didn’t want to support so many different rule sets?