On the occasion of the penultimate round of the Superbike world championship which was held this weekend on the Portimao circuit, the unfeigned rage of Toprak Razgatlioglu at the finish of the two Sunday races, totally the opposite of his usual phlegm, is revealing of his helplessness. Both he and the competition cannot challenge the hegemony of the Spanish driver Alvaro Bautista, spearhead of the official Ducati Aruba team.
Major frustration for @toprak_tr54 after giving it his absolute maximum there 💥 #PRTWorldSBK 🇵🇹 pic.twitter.com/ycHevDGBj4
- WorldSBK (@WorldSBK) October 1, 2023
Because finally, race after race, the spectacle is reduced to a walk in the park for the latter, due to lack of fighters.
All ? No, because only the Turk still resists his opponent.
And the show was of great quality this Sunday!
Toprak Razgatlioglu threw all his forces into the battle, which some considered lost in advance, and this was the case, but not by much. Rarely has such mastery of piloting been so dazzling. The Turk handles his Yamaha like no other, literally defying the laws of physics: insane curves, other-worldly braking, sharp trajectories, Alvaro Bautista will have suffered everything and can consider themselves lucky to have a Ducati!
If we were to limit ourselves to simple comparisons with the MotoGP category, it goes without saying that, in both cases, the hegemony of the Bologna brand is proven. But, in WSBK, this supremacy is open to criticism. The fault lies with regulations that are, to say the least, unsuitable for the realities and fairness of this competition.
The challenge of the championship is to open the doors to all manufacturers, therefore authorizing the approval of machines with very different pedigrees. Result ? We find production models located at price ranges of €15/000 compared to Italian cars whose entry ticket exceeds €20.
The price gap alone reveals the gulf in terms of technological advances and solutions used. Unless of course the manufacturing is artisanal, which is rare and necessarily expensive. But Ducati, under the leadership of the Volkswagen Group, has gone beyond this stage and produced in series with controlled costs. The profitability of the brand has never been so high!
It is therefore difficult to ignore, on paper, the obvious technical superiority of the Panigale: a furious V4, the result of joint development with that of the sports prototype, an advantageous displacement, an engine speed superior to the Japanese and Bavarian "in-line 4" , optimized aerodynamics, in short from the start the dice are loaded: it oozes racing while its lower cost counterparts satisfy everyday track bikers. Of course, all are optimized for competition but the bases are not the same. And the only variable for adjusting engine speeds doesn't change anything, or rather not much...
Add to that a particularly talented featherweight pilot and you will get the perfect combo!
Often mentioned, a solution consisting of fixing a minimum rider/motorcycle weight was considered for a time before finally being rejected. However, it would have made it possible to reduce the gaps.
In the end, if Toprak Razgatlioglu et Jonathan Rhea did not make any attempt to challenge this hegemony, it would have been a long time since the championship would no longer be worthy of interest.
If we continue like this, everyone will lose: Alvaro Bautista first of all whose title of 2022 World Champion, and very probably that to come shortly, are tainted by the advantages conferred on him by his machine. “It’s normal, he had a Ducati” will not fail to recall his detractors.
Then the manufacturer of Bologna, in a championship definitively committed to its cause and which favors it. As the famous quote reminds us: “To conquer without danger, we triumph without glory”.
Finally, the spectacle, often insipid, except of course last Sunday, where race 2 was one of the most beautiful we have seen in a long time.
It would be regrettable if the governing bodies of this competition, already under-regarded, did not now take all the necessary measures to reshuffle the cards a little, at the risk of scaring away the last aficionados of the discipline.
