2010 BSB Rules: Love 'em or Hate 'em!

The British Superbike Championship will have a new points scoring system for 2010, and it has caused interest and outrage across the interweb. Half of the people simply don't understand what on earth the rules mean, and half of the half that understand it are outraged. The rest are in two minds...

Basically, the BSB has stolen ideas from the American NASCAR championship, and from the Scottish Premier League football (soccer) championship. I'll try to briefly outline what will happen:

For the first 9 race meetings of the season, the points scoring system will carry on as normal (25 for a win, 20 for 2nd place, etc). But after that, the top 6 in the championship will break away (Scottish football stylee) and use the remaining races as a shoot-out for the title (NASCAR, y'all!) Just to confuse things, two race scores will be dropped, so it's actually the points from 2 less than the best results of the first 9 race meetings that will decide which 6 will fight for 1st. (Simples!)

The poor unfortunates who are too slow / on slow bikes / have crashed too much to finish in the top 6 will just carry on fighting for 7th place as usual.

Now, it wouldn't be fair for some poor muppet to run up a huge championship lead in the first 9 races, only to end up on even terms with the other 5 superstars in the "shoot-out". This is where things get even more complicated.

The top 6 will be given 500 points to start the shoot-out. Then they will be given bonus points for the podium places they scored in the first 9 races. 3 points for a win, 2 for 2nd, 1 point for a 3rd place. That means that the championship leader will still lead the championship, but possibly by a hugely reduced number of points.

Some people are complaining that the guys in 7th place downwards have no chance of getting into the top 6 in the last few races. Now, Scottish football has done this for several years, and it's worked fine. Bear in mind that whilst motorcycle racers might indulge in the odd bout of fisticuffs, Scottish football fans are more fond of mass riots, and there hasn't been so much as a punch thrown over the "top 6 split" system. (Just a lot of moaning in pubs.)

My Take

I think this is interesting. The dropped score system was used in that most poncey of motorsports, Formula One, for some years back in the days of Psycho Senna and Pénible Prost, so it's hard to argue too much about it being unsporting. Looking through my 2010 BSB spectacles, I'd have to say that the entertainingly deranged convict Josh Brookes is the big winner through the dropped score rule, as he's most likely to have 2 DNF's to dispose of and therefore lose nothing. Stuart Easton will be the big loser, as his incredible consistency means he could be chucking a good 30 points away.

James Ellison will be a dark horse for the championship, having signed for Shaun Muir's Swan Honda team alongside teeny Scotsman Easton. The Kendal Beefcake is a pretty consistent rider, so ditching two scores probably won't make much difference to him either.

The thing I like about the new system is that it's based entirely on merit. Only the top 6 get into the shoot-out. That's fair enough, they didn't get into the top 6 by winning a scratchcard. They won't start level on points in the shoot-out, but will be separated by bonus points based on their performance so far in the season.

It's too bloody complicated, but I'll give it a chance. I like the idea of having lots of guys battling at the end of the season. The championship winner will have to fight right to the end. And he can't complain about that. Motorcycle racers love to race. Having the championship heavily loaded towards the end of the season will get their adrenaline flowing. It's good for them, they like it.

Qualifying

There's another interesting little tweak to the rules. The qualifying positions for race 1 will be decided in the qualifying session as usual. But the grid for race 2 will be based on fastest lap times for race 1.

Again, I like this. It's based on merit. It's not like the cretinous Touring Car way of doing things, where grids are reversed, allowing total no-hopers to win races by being very slow in the first race, end up randomly reversed to pole position in the next race, and win by being a rolling road block all race long. No, the new BSB rules mean that guys further down the grid can take pole, but only by setting fastest lap in race 1. No-hopers need not apply.

Some smart people have pointed out that in a wet-dry race, guys low down the order might come in, switch to slick tyres and set fastest lap. I say that'll be interesting, bring it on!

All in all, I'm going to give these new rules a go. They'll shake things up. Let's remember that Superbikes are all about entertainment. That's why there's 2 races in one day. That's why there's a knockout qualifying system (for race 1 anyway). Anything that might make things interesting all year is worth a shot.

MotoGP New Year's Resolutions 2010

What New Year's Resolutions did the MotoGP riders make for this coming season? I exclusively reveal them:

Casey Stoner: Eat his greens.

Dani Pedrosa: Grow up to be a real boy this year.

Nicky Hayden: Contain his joy at the impending switch back to 1000cc bikes. Yeeee-haarrr!!!

Loris Capirossi: Grow old gracefully.

Andrea Dovizioso: Remind us what the hell he's doing on a factory HRC machine.

Randy de Puniet: Crash even less than last year.

Colin Edwards: Show Benny Elbowz the way it's done.

Ben Spies: Blow away the Texan Tornado.

Valentino Rossi: Give these kids another masterclass in winning championships. And tell F1 to screw itself again. And make up some better victory celebrations.

Jorge Lorenzo: Try to bounce when Rossi pressures him into a crash.

Alvaro Bautista: Make the Suzuki look more like a blue motorcycle than a brown, steaming turd.

Mika Kallio: Regain the consistency that nearly made him a 125cc champion (Damn Talmacsi!).

Aleix Espargaro: Show us that the satellite Duke isn't a graveyard for rookie dreams.

Hector Barbera: Prove he deserved that surprise call-up to GP from Aspar.

Hiroshi Aoyama: Show us that a Japanese rider can be a real contendah!

Marco Melandri: Regain the form that took him to 2nd in the championship back in the 990 era.

Marco Simoncelli: Kill Bart Simpson!

Donington Saved After All?

The son of the late, great Tom Wheatcroft has announced that the Donington Park race track is back in family hands, and they will be working to return the track to raceable condition.

Outstanding news. I wish him all the best. Donington's a great track and let's hope we see bikes back racing on it in 2011.

So, Is Donington Park Finally Screwed?

Boremula One has officially ditched the idea of going to Donington Park. So has MotoGP and British Superbike. World Superbikes are as yet undecided, but probably giving Donny the boot too. So is this beautiful English track finally screwed?

The history of Donington Park as a race track goes back to the 1930's. Now, I'm no fan of modern Formula One motor racing, but the old Grand Prix machines of the thirties are just bloody gorgeous. Grand Prix car racing in those days was dominated by the two main brands of Hitlermobile: Mercedes and Auto Union, known collectively as the Silver Arrows as they ran with bare metal bodyshells; the traditional German racing white paint would have added a couple of kilos to the weight of the car and was therefore omitted.

These two companies might have been Nazi-sponsored at the time (much of their engineering expertise went on to help out the German war effort) but their cars were technological marvels. The all conquering Mercedes machines were given a good run for their (Hitler-sourced) money by the much smaller Auto Union company (now Audi), whose outrageous rocket-fuelled, supercharged V16 cars were driven by geniuses such as former bike racer Tazio Nuvolari, the Italian who was a legend on two wheels and four. These German "Silver Arrows" were best known for having outrageous amounts of power and speed (200mph on the right track) but virtually no brakes whatsoever, and their drivers were heroes: Nuvolari, Rosemeyer, Caracciola, Lang, Seaman.

Donington hosted these magnificent machines until war broke out, at which point the parkland track was turned into a military depot. Decades later, it was revived and rebuilt by the late Tom Wheatcroft, becoming a race track again in the 1970's.

Holding British Championship races was good, but the track was extended with the Melbourne Loop to increase the length to world championship distance in 1985. (Named so because the loop extends towards the local village of Melbourne, not because of the Aussie city.) It might be a nadgery little Mickey Mouse section, but it allowed Donington Park to attract some proper championships. Boremula One visited once, when psychotic genius Ayrton Senna won in torrential rain, but more interestingly the track managed to bag Grand Prix motorcycle racing.

The track's parkland swooping curves and hills made for excellent bike racing, with the scary-fast Craner Curves at the start of the lap being especially exciting. The Melbourne Loop was daft, but very technically challenging, particularly where it rejoined the original track in the final left-hander, a bumpy, dodgily-cambered corner where many top racers have fallen off trying to shave a few thousandths of a second off their lap times. That was also the corner where Carl Fogarty, in a rare GP wildcard outing, hit the wrong gear and was passed by Scotsman Niall MacKenzie on the last lap, with Fogarty hilariously claiming he ran out of fuel, despite riding around the entire slowdown lap to the pits... It was also the site of the first premier class victory by a certain Signore Valentino Rossi.

Unfortunately, the track was leased from Tom Wheatcroft by some people without his foresight and business acumen.

These clowns embarked on a multi-million quid plan to attract Boremula One back. They dug up the track in preparation for creating a new track configuration. Then ran out of money.

The track's still dug up.

MotoGP has been attracted to Silverstone, who actually have the money to alter their track for MotoGP use and will do so. Their head honcho is Damon Hill, who might be a former F1 champ and son of another F1 champ, but he started out on bikes and retains an utterly genuine love for two-wheeled racing. Make no mistake that he will do the best by MotoGP. The Silverstone track also has plenty of GP bike racing history, including the legendary battle between Barry Sheene and Kenny Roberts, with the cheeky Englishman flicking the V sign at the grumpy Californian hero at high speed (King Kenny got his own back by winning the race.)

The British Superbike championship has also decided to skip Donington in 2010, incredibly choosing to have an extra round at the very dodgy Cadwell Park track, which is completely unsuited to modern superbikes but is certainly interesting.

The organizers of the World Superbike championship have not yet decided to bin their Donington round, but who knows? If the track is still a building site they will have no option but to skip it.

So is Donington Park finally screwed?

Well, for 2010, probably. But cynics are predicting that Jonathan Palmer, the former (not very quick) F1 driver who owns several British racetracks, will step in and snap up the Donington Park circuit, tart it up and bring it back to racing condition. It's not clear whether that will really happen, but we'll have to hope so. It was a great bike track and it can be again, if somebody spends several million pounds putting it back in the condition it was in before being trashed by pie in the sky dreams of F1. Here's hoping.