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As if the lone MotoGP round in North America and the debut of the MotoAmerica Medallia Superbike series alongside MotoGP at the Circuit of the Americas is not enough this weekend, we also have the opening round of the Motul FIM Superbike World Championship at Motorland Aragón in Spain. And the oft-overlooked World Superbike series offers just as much potential for great road racing this year as the other two.
All five manufacturers had at least one rider in the top 10 at the final two-day preseason test this week at Aragón and at least half a dozen riders have to be considered contenders for the title. The top five riders at the final test were well within one second of each other in combined times.
Defending champion Toprak Razgatlioğlu with the Pata Yamaha with Brixx WorldSBK Team finished the test with the second-best time, just behind the fastest lap of the man he dethroned, six-time WSBK champ Jonathan Rea on the Kawasaki Racing Team. Most professional road racers got their start as kids racing motocross, or maybe mini roadracers, in the case of riders from Spain or Italy. Razgatlioğlu grew up learning stunts. His late father was a famous stunt rider in Turkey. It's no wonder Razgatlioğlu celebrates his wins with the best stoppies in the WorldSBK paddock.
If you don't know Razgatlioğlu, you might want to watch this documentary by WorldSBK that tells the story of his 2021 championship season.
Razgatlioğlu ended Rea's six-year reign, beating him by 13 points in the season standings, and it always felt even closer than that. Last year, both riders finished with 13 wins and nine second-place finishes. Along the way to his six titles, Rea became easily the winningest rider in WSBK history, surpassing Carl Fogarty, who was arguably the biggest star Superbike racing had produced up until recent years. Rea is not ready for retirement, however, as he showed at this week's test, where he was the only rider to break into the 1:48 range.
"Today I enjoyed riding the bike," Rea said after the second day of the test. "I had a lot of fun and got a lot of feedback. When that happens we are able to go quite fast. I am as ready as I will ever be to start racing."
The rider who most challenged Razgatlioğlu and Rea at the front in 2021 was Scott Redding, who switches from Ducati to ride an M 1000 RR for the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team this year. The key will be how well Redding adapts to a new team and an inline-four BMW instead of the V-four Ducati. Redding's teammate on the factory BMW team, Michael van der Mark, will miss the opening round while recovering from a broken leg he suffered in a mountain bike crash while training.
Redding was not the fastest BMW rider at this week's test, however. That honor went to Loris Baz, who recorded the fifth-best lap time at the test. After a winless year riding a Ducati in MotoAmerica, Baz has returned to WorldSBK to ride for the Bonovo Action BMW Team.
Perhaps the most interesting story is the return of Álvaro Bautista to the Aruba.it Ducati team, where he made his World Superbike debut so spectacularly in 2019 after moving over from MotoGP. Bautista won the first 11 races that season and for a while it looked like he was going to humiliate the Superbike regulars. But after that red-hot start, crashes and setbacks soured the rest of the season for Bautista and Jonathan Rea handily beat him by 165 points to retain his title. Bautista then rode a Honda for two years and suffered the same lack of success as other Honda riders in WSBK. The last rider to win a World Superbike title on a Honda was James Toseland all the way back in 2007.
Bautista has been consistently fast on the Ducati Panigale V4 R and finished the test with the third-best lap, just a fraction behind Rea and Razgatlioğlu. Will he return to the winning form he showed in 2019 now that he's back on the Ducati? It could be the most interesting story of the season.
The trials and the promise of Garrett Gerloff
On the other hand, the most interesting story could well be the fate of the sole U.S. rider in the field, Garrett Gerloff. After a 2021 he'd like to forget — or at least forget most of it — will this be his breakthrough year or a breakdown?
The two-time MotoAmerica Supersport champion and Superbike race winner has stepped onto the podium a few times in his two WSBK seasons with the GYTR GTR Yamaha WorldSBK Team, but he's yet to win a race. 2021 was a tough year for the Texan, as high profile contact with other riders, including Rea and Michael Rinaldi, drew a lot of criticism his way. The worst was an incident in Turn One of the first lap at Assen in which he bumped into fellow Yamaha rider Razgatlioğlu, causing the Turkish rider to crash and lose the championship points lead.
"After that, it just felt like my whole fricking world was falling apart," Gerloff said in a MotoAmerica Off Track podcast after the season ended. "It's like, I don't know what the hell is going on. I don't know why this keeps happening. All I'm trying to do is do the best I can."
To make that day in Assen worse, Gerloff had to take a penalty for the contact with Razgatlioğlu and then crashed out of the race.
"That was probably the lowest point of my career, and in that moment, the lowest point in my life, for sure," he said. "I hate that it happened. That's not me."
Despite the effect it had on his confidence, Gerloff came back and got two podium finishes later in the season and finished seventh in the season standings, making him the top independent team rider. This year, he's happy to have 2021 behind him and be back with the same team.
Gerloff was strong throughout preseason testing and finished with the fourth-best time at this week's test, less than 0.2 seconds behind fellow Yamaha rider Razgatlioğlu. But then Gerloff was also strong in preseason testing in 2021 and it all fell apart in the races. 2022 is a pivotal year for the lone American in the series.
How to watch World Superbike
Short answer: It isn't getting any easier for those of us in the United States. There's always the Season Videopass for €69.90, which lets you see all the action in all classes. NBC still owns the broadcast rights to World Superbike in the United States, along with MotoGP. Last year, NBC channels showed selected Superbike rounds, but since then it has shut down its NBC Sports channel. While NBC has announced plans to show all MotoGP races, it hasn't listed a schedule for World Superbike.
World Superbike puts on good racing and, more than any other world-level pavement-based motorsports series in the world, there's a genuine though slim connection between the race machines and the motorcycles some of us actually ride ourselves. From organizers Dorna to the global media who cover motorcycle racing, there have been both concerted efforts and casual decisions that have put WorldSBK in a second-class position. For some of us who remember Superbikes' glory days, when the series rivaled GP racing in popularity, that feels sad. WorldSBK doesn't deserve second-class treatment.
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