The collapse of British superbikes (as in the superbike class) has to be over due by now… £30k swingarms, £20k ohlins forks, ridiculous carbon parts floating around the garage and excess way beyond what teams can sustain. superstock bikes on average 1-1.5 a lap off a superbike…
Add to that muppets like Stuart Higgs who’s turning the support classes in to expensive shopping bike racing that nobody wants to watch. All a ploy to make Palmer money. Getting rid of stock600 is a shocking idea. Replacing it with super twins that are more expensive to run, temperamental and slow as shit. Crap idea. The jump now is essentially 400’s to supersport 6 or stock thousand. Which you can’t do anyway even if you do have hundreds of grand a year to throw at it because it’s full already. F900 cup is another one. Slow as hell, crap looking bikes. The racing is okay.. BUT, even if you win the championship, there’s absolutely nowhere you can go unless you’ve got 160k or more to throw at supersport and get your ass handed to you (that’s if you can get on the grid in the first place).
I suspect the Todd and Padgetts split is bsb budget related, now mcams. Is it getting too much? Nobody wants to see one or two rich teams dominating and everybody else scrapping over the left overs.
Where did you get that swing arm cost figure from ? Latest WorldSBK swing arm cost I can find (2021) is capped at €10,000. Andy
I was having this conversation yesterday, aswell as the stock class The BSB guys are killing off the competitive junior class and basically forcing everyone to spend 30-40k to buy the new kwak 400's for hte junior class next year (and with a ECU that can onyl be bought from one place) leaving 30 or so owners with the 300cc twin bikes that are now, basically worthless. They ditched the competitive and good class of the TriOptions, leaving people with 30k+ spent on V2's for the BMW rubbish which is basically following one person on the grid if you look at the coverage, so any team invested in that is getting no return The guy I was chatting to is in the know, works in performance bike market and does allot if track/race bike work and said that there has been a decline this year in both race and track bike work generally and thinks he will lose quite a few customers over the latest BSB changes also as he saw a decline when thundersport packed in (Still think thats one of the UK bike racing's biggest losses in recent years, was a great club, good class mix and some really good racing). The CB500 class at thundersport used to be over full grids, competitive and decent way into racing but due to TS packing in, left these guys with no where to go and can get a CB500 for next to no money now compared to two years ago when they were premium due to the race class. Massive shame all round, but somethings going to have to give as current decline means there wont be hardly any options left soon for racing without 50k in your pocket, or track days getting more expensive and less of them.
it might have been 30k Euro tbf and was said by James Whitman on one of his walk rounds of the McAms bike. incidentally the Ducati swingarms don’t even last. They are aged at some ridiculous mileage like 1000 miles and then go back to Ducati to be crack tested, it’s that sort of money being spent that’s unsustainable
If you look at superbikes at the moment, especially wsbk.. they’re pretty much prototypes. and with stockers now being so close, you do have to wonder ..
the thing is, it’s not like superstock is crap racing… so why can’t the bikes be nearer that. Rumour has it that Tarran used a superstock motor at cadwell because the superbike engine was too much anyway…
Agree with much of this, superbike racing has lost the plot. When you start putting headlight stickers on a race bike to make it look like the road bike it no longer is you know that something has gone wrong ...
Yep, agreed. I tend just to blame Higgs tbh. Guys one of the biggest bell ends I have ever met. An ex Marshall who has an extremely high opinion of himself. Followed by Palmer who’s definitely up there on the bell end scale. Never met anyone who likes either of them.
Taz used a similar motor most of the year I think. Got a mate who's good friends with kev Stevenson, the engine builder and I'm sure he said this
The Honda he’s on at the mo was on a stock motor I believe until recently Kev is a good motor man, may get him to build my kwak over winter
He has some funny stories to tell as well. Spent a bit of time with him on euro trackdays that he's been on with his son Jacob.
