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In most years, by now we'd be four or five rounds deep into the Motul FIM Superbike World championship, having savored the fantastic views and survived the unpredictable weather of the brilliant Phillip Island circuit in Australia before returning to Europe for the summer. Not this year.
Instead of being the first major roadracing series to start, WSBK is the last. The 2021 calendar, with 39 races in 13 rounds, looks very different. Not only does the season start late and not include the iconic Phillip Island, the usual opener, but it also is more Euro-centric than before. The first 11 rounds are all in Europe before the WSBK teams finish the season in Argentina and Indonesia, the latter at the new Mandalika International Street Circuit.
One thing hasn't changed: Jonathan Rea is the favorite until someone proves otherwise. The marriage between the racer from Northern Ireland and the Kawasaki Racing Team has been one of the most fruitful in modern racing history, with six consecutive WSBK championships and a record number of wins (currently at 99). As I noted in last year's season preview, at that time, Rea had finished on the podium of just over 90 percent of all World Superbike races since he joined Kawasaki. He slipped a little in 2020 from that superhuman level of consistency, but he still finished on the podium in all three races in three of the eight rounds of last year's abbreviated schedule. And despite crashing out of the first race, he wrapped up his sixth straight title early.
Rea has won titles like clockwork and obliterated once intimidating records for wins and championships held by former Superbike master Carl Fogarty, but that doesn't mean it's getting boring or that he's taking his success for granted.
"Every year it's some new challenge from somewhere," said Rea in the WSBK season preview video. "A bike, a machine, a rider, a team, whatever. And this year will be no different."
The most likely challenge will come from the Ducati riders, according to Rea. But, there are others who are potential contenders and, for the first time since Nicky Hayden's win in the rain in Malaysia in 2016, a U.S. rider has a legitmate shot at the top of a WSBK podium, and perhaps more.
Is Garrett Gerloff about to make that jump?
Anyone who has watched Garrett Gerloff's career knows that he's a student of the sport who is capable of making a sudden step forward when things click for him. He did it in MotoAmerica Supersport when he launched a winning streak and quickly drew away to his second championship in that class. He did it again in his second year in the MotoAmerica Superbike class after his first win at Laguna Seca, and went from a top-five rider to a contender for first every weekend. Now he enters his second year in World Superbike after finishing strong in 2020 with three podium appearances in the closing three rounds.
Did that finish to 2020, including two podiums at the Pirelli Estoril Round in Portugal, signal that Gerloff has made another upshift in his riding career? Clearly, he's facing the toughest competition of his life, but he's back on the familiar YZF-R1 with the GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team and said, "I really feel like we have everything we need to win races and to be a championship contender."
"I just want to focus on me, and focus on getting the best I can out of myself and out of my Yamaha R1," Gerloff said. "I feel like if I focus on that... and just focus on the process, I feel like we'll be in a good place at the end of the season.
"I definitely would want to win a race. That's something I didn't get to do last year and I'm really fired up and motivated to try to get on the top step of the podium. So for sure, that's a goal that I have."
Gerloff's teammate is rookie Kohta Nozane of Japan, a rising young star with a spectacular riding style, so the GRT team should be fun to watch. But the more likely challenger from the Yamaha ranks is Toprak Razgatlioğlu with the factory Pata Yamaha with Brixx WorldSBK team. While Gerloff had a fine weekend at the season-ending Portuguese round last year, Razgatlioğlu did far better with two wins and a third and he finished fourth in the season standings. The Turkish rider missed the official WSBK test because of a positive COVID-19 test but he was back for a private team test two weeks ago and was up to speed.
Of course another challenger to Rea will be his Kawasaki teammate, Alex Lowes. But what about those aforementioned Ducatis?
The safest pick to challenge Rea is former MotoGP racer and British Superbike champion Scott Redding, now in his second year on the Panigale V4 R with the Aruba.IT Racing Ducati factory team. Redding finished second in the championship last year and should be stronger after a year with his team and the race bike. Meanwhile, despite finishing second in three of Rea's six championship years, Chaz Davies has been demoted from the factory team to make room for Michael Ruben Rinaldi alongside Redding. Davies will still race a Panigale V4 R, but for the independent GoEleven Team. Redding is clearly motivated to add consistency to his 2020 speed and topple Rea, while Davies will be trying to show Ducati they made a mistake by removing him from the factory team.
After years with Yamaha, Michael van der Mark joins the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team to race the new BMW M 1000 RR alongside 2013 champion Tom Sykes. BMW finished fifth, well behind Honda, in the manufacturers' standings last year and will be hoping the new M 1000 RR can turn their course.
Two more MotoGP expats join WSBK this year: Tito Rabat will ride a Ducati Panigale V4 R for the Barni Racing Team and Jonas Folger, a once-promising young star in MotoGP whose career was interrupted by illness, is aboard a BMW M 1000 RR for the Bonovo MGM Racing team out of Germany. That's in addition to Álvaro Bautista, who entered the series in 2019 and made a huge splash by winning the first 11 races on a Ducati before fading under Rea's onslaught. Bautista switched to the Team HRC Honda CBR1000RR-R last year and had less success.
In the United States, the diminished television coverage given to motorcycle roadracing since it was switched to NBCSN (as mentioned in my MotoGP season preview) has hit WSBK particularly hard. Last year, NBCSN showed only a handful of World Superbike races. It's unclear how many will be broadcast this year, meaning any U.S. fans who really want to follow the series probably need to subscribe to WSBK VideoPass. The good news is that it costs €69.90 (about U.S. $85), just half of the MotoGP subscription, and that includes all the Supersport classes and all sessions for the entire season.
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