I’m not up to speed on all the fine art behind all these decisions but doesn’t this keep happening. Kawasaki however, get an increase by using 5 concession points. https://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2023/
Disappointing but not unexpected. The rules that were rarely used to try and level the playing field (we suffered 4 years of JR’s dominance before Dorna docked Kawasaki 500rpm) were updated for this year to increase the frequency of review. If you remember, Ducati weren’t allowed to use the extra 1000 rpm over the homologated street bike rev limit the rules permitted before it even turned a wheel in competition. 250rpm might not sound much but that’ll be a hard limit so the new soft limit be 250rpm less than that, so effectively the V4R will rev to 15,500rpm. The other manufacturers should have had the balls to build a bike to the regulations, like Ducati did but they chose not to. I hope Kawasaki choke on it. Andy
tbf, if we remove our slightly Ducati tinted glasses, they released a bike that only revs to 16.5k in top gear, so their Rev reductions are based across their range. It was a clever rule dodge by Ducati that got called out. I agree though kawasaki had been dominating and releasing underwhelming road bikes badged as RR’s etc that were nothing like a race bike
FIM regulations permitted factory bikes to rev 1000rpm over the homologation bike, so theoretically, the WSBK Ducati V4 could have revved to 17,500rpm. In fact, I understand much of the software development Ducati did, gave the the bike good power at 17,000rpm. Before a wheel was turned in competition, the FIM limited the V4R to 16,000rpm. IMO, the road bike rev limitations in the first 5 gears has no relevance to the race bike. Andy
