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.”
There’s definitely potential for an interesting article on cheating & how it could be done (allegedly of course)
I thought the whole thing with superstock is racing production bikes as they come out..
The good thing about the BSB paddock is that they’re able to make changes much quicker than in WSBK or Moto GP, who remembers the qualifying format being changed week after week in BSB? So if it does or does not work then hopefully they can tweak things until it creates fair racing. You have to move with the times or you will slowly lose fans.
So let me get this right;
‘Superstock 1000’ is now just ‘Superstock’
‘Superstock 600’ is now ‘Junior Superstock’
I feel sorry for the announcers lol
Losing TC in super stock is not a good idea.
It needs rethinking in BSB as stock systems are now so good I really don’t see it as a money save completely and it makes the gulf between BSB and WSB so much bigger.
Part of the appeal of WSB coming is national riders on wildcards sad this element has gone in terms of level playing field, it was a good way of getting rides in world events