http://www.crash.net/news_View~cid~5~id~149721.htm


I guess this was inevitable. I hope the measures they've put in place are enough to stop a Ducati runaway next year I can't see anyone new coming in though despite the BMW and KTM rumours. This is purely for Ducati.

for the benefit of someone who knows NOTHING about bikes, isn't that just the same as some cars racing V8's and some running V10's?

Only if the V8's got an extra few cc over the other engines. Without going into tedious background politics a 12 is a significant disadvantage over a 4 if they operate under identical rules. When Superbikes started the 4's were 750cc and the twins were 1000cc. This changed when 1000cc 4 cyilnder roadbikes became the norm over the last 5 years. So the current status quo is 1000cc across the board with the twins (Ducati alone, really) allowed to tune up their machines more than the 4's. Ducati have stopped building the 1000cc 999 which they currently race and wanted to race their new 1098 bike, which is what the new rules allow.

That's the simple version. <sleep>

Unlike bikes cars seem to apply a limit across the board and leave it at that which tends to force everyone down the same road.

cheers parkinson! seems like the rule change is just to accomodate Ducati's new bike then!

That's not quite true, but may be the way people look at it...

In theory, a four produces more power than a triple, and a triple a bit more than a twin. However, a twin produces a bit more torque than a triple and a triple slightly more than a four. WSB rules used to allow 750cc fours, 900cc triples and 1000cc twins. Rather like the old F1 days where turbo engines were 1500cc and N/A ones were 3500. Honda got peed off with Ducati beating them, and built the SPW/1/2 bikes based on the VTR1000 road bike engine. It won a championship IIRC, but made little difference. With 1000cc bikes like the R1 and GSXR1000 becoming more popular, the rules were altered to allow other 1000cc bikes into WSB, although again, I don't think Ducati had many problems still beating them, primarily because the V-twin means the bike can be narrow and slippery, where an inline four is a bit wider....

I would say that the rule change is aimed primarily at Ducati, not out of any conspiracy, but simply because despite rumours of KTM and BMW coming in they are the only ones who will build this sort of bike.

Honda did build their own V-Twin and it beat Ducati two out of three times, but no one bought it which kind of defeated the point for Honda, you don't go racing in Superbikes with a machine that the public aren't interested in.

But back to Ducati, they have always claimed these rules aren't about winning, but costs, they've lost their lucrative customer market in WSB over the last few years and would very much like to get it back. A much cheaper 1098 might help this.

The SP1/2 were bloody expensive, that's why maybe noone bought them. That and they were group 17...

The fact that the 998 looked much much nicer didn't help either.