WSBK: Phillip Island, Young and Old

The victories at the season opening meeting of the World Superbike championship in Australia were shared between Leon Haslam and Carlos Checa.

Haslam the Younger was the quickest rider all weekend. After taking his debut superpole, he took his debut race win in race one on his Alstare Suzuki. Xerox Ducati's erratic young nutter Michel Fabrizio trundled over the line after a wait of four thousandths of a second, with team-mate Nitro Nori Haga 3rd.

In race two, it was Catalan codger Carlos Checa who took the victory on his privateer Althea Ducati, snatching the lead into MG corner on the last lap and forcing Haslam to settle for 2nd place with Fabrizio 3rd.

This looks like being an outstanding year for WSBK. The sheer depth of talent is arguably the best in the history of World Supers, with National and World champions stretching halfway down the field. The Ducatis are as quick as always (presumably having surreptitiously screwed a few more horsepower out of their overbored homologation specials, as always.) The Suzukis are also hella quick. Both Haslam and Guintoli led the second race, and look like making a great team. In fact, all of the factory and semi-factory teams (7 in all) have damn good riders who showed well in flashes at least.

It wasn't that surprising to see the Kawasakis being fairly slow after good starts, or the BMW of Ruben Xaus being AWOL after the nutty Spaniard had crashed at every opportunity in practise and failed to make the grid. However, the biggest disappointment was the Yamaha Italia squad. Both Crutchlow and Toseland flung their bikes at the scenery in race one, while they were fairly mediocre in race two, bearing in mind how Benny Elbowz ruled the championship for Yamaha last year.

Next time out it's the magnificent Portimao circuit in Portugal. With the field this closely packed, the rollercoaster hills and turns of that track should bring great racing.

WSBK: Phillip Island Qually 2010

The "Pocket Rocket", Leon Haslam, finally came of age in Australia in qualifying for the first World Superbike race of the 2010 season, bagging his first ever pole position on the world stage.

The stocky young Englishman was on blistering form throughout qualifying, wrestling the howling 1000cc Suzuki machine to pole position, fastest in every one of the three final qualifying sessions. It was a magnificent performance for the lad who has previously been best known for his "always the bridesmaid" performances in British Superbike.

Haslam is nicknamed "Pocket Rocket" in honour of his father, "Rocket" Ron Haslam, who never really achieved the results on the world stage that he probably deserved, but was ludicrously quick, particularly on the first lap on cold tyres in 500cc GP races. The Haslam name is now back in the record books.

Flakey Italian Michel Fabrizio, who can't quite decide if he's jaw-droppingly quick or a bloody idiot, took second place by the tiniest of margins, less than two hundredths of a second. Can the young Italian Ducati rider keep this up over a whole season to bag the title? History would say no, but it's hard to say.

Up and coming English nutcase Cal Crutchlow grabbed 3rd place. The World Supersport champion was damn quick, if a tad erratic, in British Superbike, and he returned to 1000cc machines like a duck to water. He was quick all round the lap, and downright terrifying out of the last corner. It was great to see his father in charge of the pit board too, complete with enormous moustache.

The front row was rounded out by serial crasher Carlos Checa on a privateer Ducati.

It's looking good for the race.

MotoGP: Suzuki Still Red Hot at 2nd Sepang Test

After the 2nd of 3 days at Sepang, Suzuki have shown that their testing speed at the end of last year was no fluke. The light blue team are once again leading the field on their second Malaysian visit of the testing season.
John "Hopper" Hopkins has topped the timesheets for both of the first two days. Part of this has to be down to the Bridgestone tyres, which always perform well at Sepang, but it's clear that the new 800cc Suzuki is a wickedly fast machine. Last year, Hopper struggled valiantly in his attempts to finish on the podium. This year, he looks like a likely race winner.
Mixed in with the Suzukis were the two Yamahas of Rossi and Edwards, with the Texan beating The Doctor to a faster time. However, Matthew Birt reports that Rossi rode the fastest race simulation.
Birt also reveals that the Hondas are still woefully down on top speed compared to Ducati and Suzuki. This is amazing, considering that HRC have had nearly 2 months since the last test to wring more power out of the brand new V4. Nicky Hayden has reeled off some respectable times, and surprisingly has been faster than Honda's former 250cc World Champions, Pedrosa and Melandri, who were supposed to have an advantage over The Kentucky Kid on the new 800cc machines.
The d'Antin Ducatis are also very quick. It seems that Ducati are still struggling with the fancy electronics on the factory bikes, while the simpler customer machines are working beautifully.
It will be interesting to see if Honda can find any performance on the final day of the test.

MotoGP Sepang Test - Suzuki Still Fast

Boy, these 800cc MotoGP machines are quick.
The MotoGP test at Sepang, Malaysia is over, and the times from Day 3 have been posted on Crash.net. Suzuki topped the time sheets, showing that their impressive pace from Valencia wasn't a one-off. John Hopkins put in the fastest time with a 2:01.64 on experimental race tyres. (Apparently he did a 5-lap stint on these tyres, so they were definitely not qualifiers.) Incredibly, this is more than 9 tenths of a second faster than he managed in the Sepang race a few months ago, and just 4 tenths slower than the fastest race lap set by Capirossi.
Day 1 of the test had been a washout, with one corner being literally several feet underwater, but Colin Edwards set the fastest time in the limited running. Day 2 belonged to the Suzukis, as did day 3.
Journalist Matthew Birt, who was at the test, has blogged that the Suzukis were fastest through the speed traps on day 2, at 187.65mph (302km/h). It seems that Suzuki have produced an 800cc engine which is greatly more impressive than their 990. Birt also reports that the 800s are much kinder to their tyres. This could make an interesting twist to the Michelin - Bridgestone tyre war next season.
Ducati were not at the test, and other top riders missing included Melandri and Pedrosa, who are both recovering from surgery, and Valentino Rossi, who is busy driving in Rally New Zealand.
However, Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden were both testing their factory machines (on Michelin tyres), and both were comfortably outpaced by the Suzuki boys. How much of this is down to tyres and how much to bikes is an open question, but the straight line speeds don't really lie. It will be interesting to see the Suzuki go up against the new Ducati on a fast track. Yamaha and Honda will of course do a massive amount of work on the new 800cc bikes, but Suzuki have really hit the ground running for next season. Let's hope they can keep it up, so that we can have 4 different race-winning manufacturers next year.