2009 World Superbike Championship: Lessons from the First Four Races
With just 2 rounds of the 2009 World Superbike Season completed, it is still very early to be predicting who will be crowned World Champion at Portimao in Portugal this October (or earlier). Nevertheless there are some clear trends coming out of the first 4 races. 1. Haga has changed. 2. Spies is for real. 3. Ducati is down in power. 4. The Yamaha and Aprilia are real threats to Ducati Dominance.
1) Noriyuki Haga has Changed for the Better
After the first four races of the 2008 season, Noriyuki Haga was sitting in 9th place in the championship with just 22 points. His first 4 race finishes were 13th, 14th, 7th and 8th. Contrasting this with 2009 is like day and night. Today, Haga leads the championship after taking a win and 3 seconds places at 2 circuits he doesn’t particularly like or do well at.
This indicates a new found maturity for the Japanese rider who is prepared to do the best possible at each weekend keeping an eye firmly on the championship rather than trying to win at all costs. Although a lot of commentators are focussing on Spies, Haga has 82 points, just 3 less than his famous Ducati racer predecessor Troy Bayliss had at the same time last year. We all know how that story ended! Haga seems to have bonded well with the factory Ducati team and Davide Tardozzi in particular. He is no stranger to Ducati, having raced a privateer 999RS in 2004 taking 6 victories. If he can keep this new maturity up and also become stronger like he usually does later in the season (he took 5 wins in the last 7 rounds in 2008), the championship may well be his for the taking. The next round, Valencia, is his favorite. Last year he crashed out of the first race and won the second. What happens in Spain will be a portent for the future.
2) Ben Spies in the Real Deal
Ben Spies comes to the championship with special training. For the last 3 years he has been racing Matt Mladin, the 2 time Australian and 6 time AMA Superbike Champion, and beating him. Mladlin is mentally tough and has pushed Spies hard as the two of them basically competed in their own race series the last few seasons as few of the other competitors could keep up with the flying Yoshi Suzukis.
You can’t get a much better entrance to the World Superbike Championship than Ben’s. Two rounds, 2 pole positions. Four races and 3 victories. Who knows what would have happened if Spies hadn’t run off the track on the first lap of the first race at Phillip Island. Oh, and all this on a new bike, the radical new cross plane crank Yamaha R1.
Ben has put his competitors on notice. He is a championship threat even if winning the championship in his debut season is well ahead of his own expectations of himself. There lies the rub. Commentators and Spies fans clearly expect him to keep the results coming, an almost impossible task for the series rookie made even harder by his almost perfect start. The key question is how Ben will handle the setbacks when they inevitably come during the European rounds. What will happen when Yamaha struggle for a setup. I’ll say this. If any kid has a shot of handling it, it will be Ben, thanks to his mental toughness developed during his multi year feud with former teammate Mladin.
3) Ducati is wanting for horsepower
Both Phillip Island and Losail are circuits that reward horsepower and at least visually the Ducati’s were found wanting. Although the Ducati’s have a 200cc advantage because of their twin cylinder configuration that all things being equal produces less horsepower than it’s multi-cylinder competitors, the rules are such that the Italian machines are 6kg heavier than their four cylinder counterparts and have a 50mm air restrictor fitted.
This seems to hamper the high speed acceleration of the Ducati’s making it difficult to pass down longer straights even though ultimate top speed is competitive. At Phillip Island Max Neukirchner’s Suzuki GSX-R1000 looked like it was gobbling up Haga’s 1098R down the main straight and indeed it was recording speeds 5 km/h faster with dramatically faster high speed acceleration. The Suzuki was reaching 311 km/h (193 mph) while Haga was pegged out at 304 km/h. However more noticeable than the top speed difference was the acceleration out of high speed turn 12 that would allow the Suzuki to pass the Ducait before the finish line. Maybe Haga’s teammate, Michel Fabrizio, had the better 1098R that day as he also recorded a top speed of 311 km/h (for the record, Max Biaggi’s Aprilia RSV4 was fastest at 315!)
At Losail, the fastest speed recorded in the races was Régis Laconi’s Ducati 1098R at 321 km/h (199 mph). Haga, Spies (Yamaha R1) and Biaggi all recorded similar top speeds of 315, 314 and 317 km/h respectively. However, just as in Australia, the 4 cylinder bikes accelerated a lot harder at higher velocities. As we move to the European rounds there will be more circuits where this Ducati weakness will be less critical.
4) The Yamaha and Aprilia are competitive already
Three wins in a row from four starts. The Yamaha is competitive. You think!! The new Yamaha proves the old adage that racing improves the breed, being effectively almost a production version of the old 990cc M1 MotoGP machine. The M1 went from uncompetitive to a championship winner when Valentino Rossi joined Yamaha, in part, due to the change in the engine that was the cross-plane crank. This change made the inline 4 behave more like a V-four, principally making it easier to ride with a smoother power delivery that was easier on the rear tire.
Spies new production based R1 seems to have the same attributes as it pulls strongly off the turns and has been fast at the end of the races even when Ducati and Honda pilots have complained of failing rear grip.
The Aprilia RSV4 doesn’t need a strange crank design because it is a V4. The bike is tiny in scale and seems to be developing plenty of power already as evidenced by trap speeds at Phillip Island where Max Biaggi was fastest. Aprilia has a proud GP racing history and has won World Superbike Championship races before, most notably with Troy Corser on their RSV1000 twin (Haga also raced the Aprilia twin in 2002). The only factor is whether Max Biaggi can run at the front at every round. He has a habit of running hot and cold at different circuits and also of choking under pressure, witness his last lap excursion at Phillip Island.
At the end of 2 rounds, Haga leads the championship on 85 points with Ben Spies 10 points behind in second place. Max Neukirchner is 3rd on 40 points with the other Max (Biaggi) 2 points further behind in 4th. The next round of the championship is Valencia, Spain on April 5th.
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