WSBK: Corser to BMW, Finally!

At last, Troy Corser has officially signed to race the new BMW bike in the World Superbike championship next year. The rumours had been very strong for a very long time, but as the time passed and no announcement was made, people were starting to wonder whether the Aussie would stay at Yamaha. Corser is a double WSBK champion, well known as being the best development rider in the business, which is why BMW have snapped him up.

He will ride alongside Catalan hero Ruben Xaus, who is hugely popular due to being a raving lunatic, and is sometimes nicknamed Ruben Chaos due to his erratic riding and crashes. It's a great strategy from the German company. Hire one guy who will turn your new superbike into a winner, and another guy who is loved for his rostrum or straw bales riding style. No publicity is bad publicity, after all. Xaus will either be competing with the leaders or tumbling through gravel traps. Either way, the commentators will keep saying the words bee, emm and doubleyou, which is the name of the game.

This means that the race for the second Yamaha Italia seat alongside Englishman Tom Sykes is still as mystifying as ever. There doesn't appear to be anyone available with a lot of WSBK experience and race-winning talent. Well, there is current Kawasaki crasher Regis Laconi, but he's infuriatingly hit and miss. This led him to losing the WSBK title to his team-mate James Toseland when they were riding for the factory Ducati squad. The serious rumours are currently about Ben Spies and his amazing technicolour pay packet, although a couple of other guys have tried out the bike in testing. We'll have to wait and see.

WSBK: Foggy Out, BMW In

Carl Fogarty has turned his back and walked away from World Superbike racing after failing to find a sponsor for his MV Agusta project. Foggy is known both for being staggeringly quick on a superbike (4 times WSBK champ, former Isle of Man TT lap record holder) and for his ability to start a full-on riot in an empty room (never mind a press room containing Frankie Chili and Aaron Slight). He has been trying to find sponsorship to run a team since his deal with Petronas ran out at the end of 2006.

The Foggy Petronas FP1 was never really on the pace. It was initially designed for the 990cc MotoGP series, but the project was canned by Petronas (a Malaysian oil company) and turned into a superbike. It is well known amongst bike fans that nobody has ever seen the FP1 road bikes that were supposedly built to homologate the race bike. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they're locked up in a factory in Malaysia. The WSBK rules have now been changed so that teams must first produce the road bikes, then homologate the race machines. At the time the FP1 was entered into WSBK, the rules allowed for 1000cc twins, 900cc triples or 750cc four cylinder machines. The FP1 was a 900cc triple, but the rules soon changed to allow 1000cc for all engine configurations with appropriate tuning rules (2- and 3-cylinder bikes being allowed a high level of tune to compensate for their lack of top-end power compared to a four). As the FP1 had been homologated at 900cc, it had to remain there and always struggled, apart from a few times when Troy Corser rode the wheels off it and finished well.

The new MV Agusta bike has done respectably well in Superstock races, and there are high hopes for a Superbike version. This is still looking quite likely, but not with Foggy at the helm.

In other news, BMW have announced that they will enter the World Superbike championship in 2009. This is fantastic news for the series, as BMW are a company that take their racing very, very seriously and are in it to win. It is presumed that they will enter a 4-cylinder bike rather than one of their bulky boxer twins. I have seen film of Randy Mamola accidentally demonstrating the limitations of a boxer engine (cylinders sticking straight out the sides, also called a horizontally opposed engine) when he leant over too far in a corner and pole-vaulted over the outstretched cylinder!

Hopefully MV Agusta will already be in the series by 2009, then there would be 3 European manufacturers chasing the 4 Japanese marques (Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki). It has also been rumoured that KTM will consider making a 1200cc twin, which would mean an incredible 8 manufacturers involved in WSBK. Let's not get carried away before these rumours are confirmed, but with the addition of BMW, the future of World Superbikes looks secure.