It’s just been announced that there will be another little shake-up in the BSB class regulations. The Pirelli National Superstock 1000 Championship will drop ‘1000’ from its name allowing, the option for MCRCB to accept bikes of bigger capacity.
Euro5 emissions rules have a lot to do with this. Factories are having to produce bigger engines to make the same power. It’s thanks to all the exhaust gubbins and emissions related guff. And we’ve already seen the effect of this in the ‘Junior Superstock’ category (as well as Supersport); when Kawasaki released the ZX-6R with a 636cc engine, the racing regs were manipulated to let them in.
Now, thanks to more and more superbike manufacturers releasing bikes with bigger-than-1000cc-engines, it looks like the same is happening in the big boy’s Superstock class. It could mean that we see bikes like Aprilia’s RSV4 1100 and Ducati’s Panigale V4 on Superstock grids from now on.
But it might not. Because any bike above 1000cc will have to run a MoTeC ECU, with the rider aids disabled (like in BSB). If you ask me, loosing your rider aids is too big a price to pay; not only do modern TC systems help you lap faster, they save your tyres too. A 15 lap Superstock race on Pirellis with 200bhp and no TC is hard work, I can tell you!
But that’s not the half of it. I don’t think many of the top teams will want to run a MoTeC ECU. Why? Because it’s much more difficult to cheat with one of them. Shock horror, people cheat in the Superstock class.
BSB Series Director Stuart Higgs had this to say
“We have to reflect the market and create opportunities for manufactures to participate. With Euro 5 and the general pattern and frequency of sports bikes entering the market changing, we have to think differently. Now we have technical solutions that can balance different capacity limits and architecture and we can apply this to several classes (Supersport, Junior Supersport and Superstock) to create a greater depth of competition and platform for teams and manufacturers.”
