MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

The primary seats are now all spoken for in WorldSBK. Yesterday’s announcement that Michael van der Mark would partner Toprak Razgatlioglu at the official BMW Motorrad squad is likely to be followed very soon by confirmation from Kawasaki has tabbed Axel Bassani as Jonathan Rea’s replacement.

The only factory seats to be decided at the HRC squad. Their line-up is all but certain to remain as Xavi Vierge and Iker Lecuona, with both having signed Honda contracts already. The only delay on announcing their pairing for 2024 is that until Marc Marquez confirms his future, Honda wants to have the option to move Lecuona to the LCR squad in MotoGP. Lecuona would then replace Johann Zarco, who would be promoted into the Repsol Honda team.

As a result all five factories in WorldSBK have effectively penned their squads for next year. The confirmation that Scott Redding would move to the independent BMW of the Bonovo team was significant for a number of reasons. Redding was under contract but at the centre of plenty of speculation for next year. Kawasaki was an obvious target for him to replace the departing Rea, but ultimately with Kawasaki lasered in on Bassani, this option disappeared quickly.

For a while on Saturday morning, it looked like we were on for a repeat of Silverstone 2018. The race that Sunday was canceled, after torrential rain fell all night and through the morning, and Tito Rabat suffered a horrific broken leg when he crashed due to standing water, and was hit by the Yamaha of Franco Morbidelli, who had also crashed due to standing water, and the rain kept coming and the track never dried. The circuit is still suffering the repercussions of that weekend today, as it slowly wins back the trust of MotoGP fans.

Fortunately, this wasn't a repeat of Silverstone 2018. For a start, the circuit has been resurfaced, and drainage improved. The rain was lighter and less intense, but above all, it eased off occasionally, giving the track a chance to drain. The underlying problem of Silverstone is it is flat as a pancake and sits up above the local area, making it a prime target for any precipitation which just happens to be passing by. And with rains like we saw through Saturday, water can still accumulate faster than it can drain.

What motivates a rider? Winning championships, winning races, and making money are three big factors that go into the decision-making process. The news that Toprak Razgatlioglu will leave Yamaha at the end of this season has left more questions than answers about what motivates the Turkish star.

The paddock rumour mill in Catalunya centred on a proposed move to BMW. It’s fairly sure that there will be more than a million reasons why he chose the German manufacturer. Toprak is a unique rider in many ways. His motivation has always been to be a Superbike star, and while he has recently flirted with the prospect of a move to the MotoGP class, the chances of that are limited.

His Yamaha MotoGP test didn’t go as well as he had hoped. Arriving to Jerez to find a bike that, rumour has it, didn’t quite fit his frame left him feeling that the chips were falling against a move to the premier class. That test could have proved crucial to Toprak deciding to leave Yamaha. Having seen that the Japanese manufacturer didn’t back him to the hilt he might have felt slighted. That’s the feeling that led him to leave Kawasaki in 2019 to switch to the blue bikes.

The Suzuka decision

Two rounds into the WorldSBK season and it already feels that the back is broken on the season. After the shortest winter in memory, some team personnel said that they had just a few days off over Christmas, it’s been a hectic time for the paddock. This week will be a rare chance to catch their breath but with tests in Aragon, Montmelo and Assen on the schedule for teams it’s clear that there’s still plenty of work to be done!

After a hard winter, Indonesia should have been a reward for much of the paddock. With the track sitting on the stunning coastline of Lombok it’s a perfect holiday destination. Good weather, nice hotels, white sand and local cuisine makes for a perfect destination. Unfortunately, that postcard image didn’t quite work out for most teams. Food poisoning seemed to affect half the paddock and the weekend became a test of endurance on and off track.

It’s been a long, hard winter and this was the culmination of that for many...

Toprak wins again

Yamaha know the challenge they are facing in 2023; a horde of fast Ducati’s that can be competitive everywhere. For Toprak Razgatlioglu that means he has to be perfect week in and week out. Australia was far from that objective for the Turkish star, and with Alvaro Bautista having claimed five wins from six races it was critical that Toprak would win at least one race in Indonesia.

A hat-trick of wins for Alvaro Bautista, two Sunday podiums for Michael Ruben Rinaldi and even a double race win in the Supersport class meant that Australia was absolutely perfect for Ducati. With his likely title rivals faltering it was even better for Bautista. Steve English looks back on Round 1 of the Superbike World Championship

Perfect weekend for Bautista and Ducati

Stop the presses: Ducati are a juggernaut! It’s hardly news that Ducati, winners of both MotoGP and WorldSBK titles in 2022, are strong. It was perhaps a little bit startling to see just how strong they were in Phillip Island for the opening round of the Superbike season though. With four bikes inside the top five, they were able to take advantage of Kawasaki’s stuttering start to the campaign and a crash for Toprak Razgatlioglu but even so it was a perfect start to the campaign for them.

With Axel Bassani and Philipp Oettl finishing fourth and fifth in Sunday’s 22 lap finale it was clear just how good the Panigale V4R was working in Australia. It was also likely that Alvaro Bautista would claim a hat-trick of race wins at Round 1 and that Michael Ruben Rinaldi would make progress and be strong, but Bassani and Oettl’s Sundays were very newsworthy.

BMW has nowhere to hide in 2023. The Bavarian manufacturer has Super Concessions to the chassis and an all-star rider line-up but will it be enough to be able to get to the front? Steve English assesses their chances.

In the middle of last season BMW showed promise. Scott Redding had three podiums in consecutive rounds and it seemed that a corner had been turned. That being said the rest of the season was one of inconsistency. For Redding, a title contender with Ducati in his first two WorldSBK seasons, the progress was impressive but also not enough.

The former BSB champion demands a lot from his team and the manufacturer and while they were regularly inside the top ten, a clear sign of progress, it wasn’t always enough for Redding. Changes to the bike over the winter have left him underwhelmed and the 30 year old even went so far as to say that “BMW might be more interested in selling bikes rather than winning races.”

An updated M1000RR that looks very different visibly is also able to take advantage of the Super Concessions available to manufacturers this year. It has allowed BMW to change the swingarm pivot on the bike and the hope is that this will help improve the handling but there is still much work to be done to turn from a top ten bike to a top five bike. With an even deeper field this year that issue is likely to be exaggerated.

Form vs function

If you wondered why BMW does not build and race a MotoGP bike, Saturday at Motegi gave you your answer. With torrential rain forcing a red flag in the Moto2 Q2 session, the cancellation of MotoGP's untimed practice session FP3 (FP4 had already been scrapped due to the shortened schedule), and the delay of MotoGP Q1 and Q2, Loris Capirossi and his crew were sent out multiple times to assess the state of the track in their safety cars.

That meant that the audience were treated to hour upon hour of BMW cars circulating at speed, with close ups of the cars drifting through the water, the BMW branding on display. (Do not ask me what car it is: I have so little interest in cars I don't even own one. The only thing I know is that it is some form of M model, which, I learned from the introduction of the BMW M1000RR superbike, is BMW's sports brand.)

With this, and the BMW M Award for the best qualifying performances of the year, BMW gets a massive amount of exposure through MotoGP, without the risk of failure associated with actually racing in the series. Why would they trade that in to go racing?