BSB: James Ellison to GSE Yamaha

The BSB silly season is galloping merrily along now that the racing is over for the year. The latest news is that James Ellison has been officially confirmed alongside Leon Camier to ride for GSE Yamaha next year.

Hopefully his return to the Yamaha stable will be happier than his time at Tech 3 in MotoGP. You might remember that Yamaha's first attempt at a chassis that year was atrocious, and Valentino Rossi quickly progressed to a new chassis. However, Ellison was stuck on the old one for the whole year. Add that to the abysmal Dunlop tyres he was saddled with and it was a real year to forget for Ellison. (TV commentators might be apologists for the US-owned Anglo-Japanese company, but they made a pretty pathetic attempt at joining the big two tyre companies in MotoGP. Anyway, Michelin make tyres in Britain too.)

However, next year he will be with the all-conquering GSE team, who have mostly spent this year throwing their toys out of the pram and complaining about the rules when they weren't too busy winning the championship with Shakey Byrne and Ducati. They'll be on snazzy big-bang Yamaha R1's, with technical help from Yamaha Italia. The new Yam should be a missile, and I'm talking Exocet rather than Scud. Ellison has had some excellent showings this year, especially in the early and late races of the season. Now he'll be on an excellent bike with an excellent team behind him, and we'll see the real Ellison. There'll be nowhere to hide if he has a bad day, and he should win races if he has a good day.

May as well yap about the rest of the silly season goings on while I'm at it.

Rizla have withdrawn their sponsorship from Crescent Suzuki, giving no reason but there are mutterings that the move to British Eurosport TV coverage (and Channel 4 in the middle of the night a couple of days later) has reduced the viewing figures too far for the investment to be worth it. They'll just have to sell their wacky baccy wrappers elsewhere.

Perhaps not unrelated is the news that Atsushi Watanabe has transferred to TAS Suzuki (who ran Michael Laverty this year). Atsu is a hero in Japan due to his Suzuka 8 hour results and All Japan Superbike title. He's less of a hero in the UK as he keeps getting beaten by the privateers in BSB. However, nobody goes well at Suzuka unless they have a serious pair of stones. (I mean Bridgestones, of course...) Maybe he'll do better next year. I dunno.

HM Plant Honda have lost both of their riders to world championship racing, and the current rumours are that they'll replace one of them with the hugely popular, so laid back he's horizontal, Australian Glen Richards, who won this year's British Supersport title on a Triumph. The other seat may go to scouser Steve Brogan, who has been impressive in British Superstock 1000 and Supersport this year. He revealed on TV that he has been re-signed by Honda UK, and people are predicting that this will mean a move up to BSB. We'll find out soon enough, but the silly season silliness continues.

BSB: Shakey Doubles at Brands

With the British Superbike title sewn up, Shane Byrne was able to relax for the final round of the year at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit, taking a magnificent double victory. Leon Haslam and Cal Crutchlow tied up second and third places in the championship. Michael Rutter made history with his 300th superbike race start, and ran the number 300 for the weekend to celebrate, while Karl Harris was forced to withdraw and was replaced by John Kirkham.

Race 1
The riders were held for a long time on the grid when one of the back row starters stalled, but when the lights finally went out, Cal Crutchlow made the best start to lead into Paddock Hill bend on his HM Plant Honda, with the rest of the pack managing to miss each other and slot in behind. Airwaves Ducati's Shane Byrne also started well, as did James Ellison, running higher on the Hydrex Bike Animal Honda than he has done for most of the year. Crutchlow's team-mate Leon Haslam was in fourth place, riding injured after a dopey-looking crash in qualifying when he looked over his shoulder and immediately highsided into a gravel trap, dislocating his collar bone. Byrne's team-mate Leon Camier was in fifth, while the long wait on the grid had caused Tom Sykes to damage the clutch of his Rizla Suzuki and make a poor start, running in sixth.

Coming into Druids for the second time, Shane Byrne was able to take a wide, swooping line on his Ducati to pass Crutchlow for the lead. After that, the top six pretty much held station until the end of the 30-lap race. The gaps opened and closed, but nobody managed to pass anyone else. Seventh placed Michael Laverty on the Relentless Suzuki was closing in on Sykes, but he dropped back and eventually retired with a technical problem. This promoted NW200 Ducati veteran Michael Rutter to eighth. Gary Mason was the leading privateer on the Quay Garage Honda.

It had been Shakey Byrne's first win for months, having had to carefully nurse his championship lead for the last few rounds. He celebrated with a Valentino Rossi style sidesaddle wheelie and a rolling burnout.

Read my full report, including the much more exciting race 2, of the second Brands Hatch round of the British Superbikes at Motorbikesport.

Engine Strategies for 600cc GP Class

The replacement of the 250cc 2-stroke GP class has been announced as a truly bizarre 600cc 4-stroke class. The engine rules will be relatively open, although there is talk of a rev limit, but there will be a ludicrous "claiming rule" meaning that anyone can buy another team's engine for 20,000 Euros. (About 15 and a half thousand quid, 27,000 US Dollars, or 40,000 Aussie Dollars.) I have come up with a few strategies for teams to find a supply of decent engines for €20,000 or less.

1. Economy of Scale
Just build loads of €100,000 engines and the price will come down to €20,000. That means you'll end up supplying most of the grid as they all queue up to claim your engines, but you could still make a few quid due to the economies of scale.
Pro: Brilliant engines for a knock-off price.
Con: Large amount of capital required to make engines for half the grid.

2. Steal Road Bike Engines
If you steal the 600cc engine from a Honda CBR600 or Yamaha R6, then it's free. That means you can spend €20,000 on engine tuning and still break even when somebody claims the engine.
Pro: Free engines leave loads of money for tuning.
Con: The police might get a tad suspicious by the number of thefts in the area of your race team.

3. Commit Murder for Road Bike Engines
Instead of sneaking around at night to steal the engines, you could wait in a country lane until you hear a 600cc sport bike howling towards you, then string up a chain at throat height. The decapitated rider will be helpless to stop you stealing his bike.
Pro: Free engines leave loads of money for tuning.
Con: Engine may be damaged by inevitable crash, will spend 20 years in prison if caught.

4. Infiltrate Ten Kate Organization
Everyone knows that Ten Kate are the best engine tuners in World Supersport, so their factory would be a great place to steal 600cc engines. There are many possible Prison Break-style strategies for the infiltration. My choice would be to dress up as legendary engine tuner Gerrit ten Kate. He's a big lad, so there should be space for an engine inside your fake belly.
Pro: Fantastic engines for free, just pocket the €20,000 when somebody claims them.
Con: Dutch is a tricky language.

5. Impersonate Marshals to Steal WSS Bikes
Staying on the World Supersport theme, it should be possible to nick bikes from WSS races. Just dress up in some mucky orange overalls and hang around a slow corner waiting for a wildcard, or Danish nutter Robbin Harms, to cause a huge pileup. Grab the best bike that's lying on the floor, wheel it behind the tyre wall, into the back of your van and drive off.
Pro: Free, highly tuned engines.
Con: Have to hang around all day drinking coffee from thermos and eating dog-eared sandwiches, may have to help rescue bikes of wrong engine size, may have to visit several races before suitable crash.

Now, I can't be sure which of these strategies will be used by the teams when the 600cc engine rules come in, but I'm pretty sure it will be one of the ideas above.

WSBK: What Snobs Don't Get About World Superbike

There has been a great deal of wailing from the MotoGP snob crowd lately on the issue of their new single tyre rule. One thing that has often left their lips is the plaintive cry: "But it's just another step towards World Superbikes!" This is usually followed quickly by "Not that there's anything wrong with World Superbikes, of course." (Meaning that there is.) So here's what the hardcore MotoGP snobs just don't get about WSBK.

World Superbike has a control tyre. But that's all. No control electronics. No control engines, or gearboxes, or chassis, or suspension. Nothing. Just the tyres.

Listening to the snobs, you'd think WSBK was some kind of single make series, which completely misses the point. World Superbike is all about keeping a connection with the road bikes that the general public buy. Each WSBK machine starts out as a road bike, or at least all the components of a road bike. (Full factory teams like Ducati, and next year Aprilia and BMW, take a chassis and engine from the production line, while semi-factory and privateer teams start with an actual road bike, removing the lights and all that stuff.)

World Superbike is all about differences. The fact that the racing is close is because the donor 1000cc 4-cylinder road bikes are all fundamentally of similar performance (and since you can't compare apples with oranges, the 1200cc Ducatis are handicapped to be close enough to the 1000cc 4-cylinder machines with weight ballast and air inlet restrictors). That's what's special about WSBK, and that's why there will be 7 manufacturers in the series next year. Because they get the chance to demonstrate the actual machines that you can buy from the dealerships, not just a control chassis and engine with a badge slapped on. (Cough! Nascar! Cough!)

But these road bikes undergo major changes to turn them into racing machines. Engine modifications (racing camshafts, pistons, con-rods), racing gearbox and clutch, racing exhaust, racing brakes, suspension modifications (full race forks, rear suspension and swing arm are used, so long as the mounting points remain the same), carbon fibre fairings (the same shape as those of the road bike) and trick electronics (no restrictions whatsoever) are all allowed. The chassis, cylinder head and engine block must remain fundamentally the same as the road bike.

WSBK machines produce anything up to 220bhp and can top 200mph at a circuit like Monza. The main reason why they race so closely is that there is a control tyre. Yes, they race cool circuits that promote good racing, like Assen, Brands Hatch, Monza and Phillip Island. But the bikes are in no way identical, except for the black, rubbery things wrapped around the rims. The control tyre rule works incredibly well, considering how different the bikes are. There are generally two tyre compounds which are realistically usable on each circuit, and people manage to have a great race on one or other of them, even though the way a tyre is used on a thundering, torquey, 200bhp 1200cc V-twin Ducati is very different to a screaming, peaky, 215bhp 1000cc inline four cylinder Japanese bike.

The best teams and riders win, and that is partly because with a control tyre, the rider can make the difference, he doesn't have to vainly try to compensate for a set of tyres that are 8 tenths slower than the leader's. And it is partly because, with rules that are far more open than most people realize, teams and manufacturers can alter their bikes to get the most out of the tyres.

So say what you like about World Superbikes, but don't look down your nose. These are real race bikes, the rules are surprisingly open, and while the single tyre rule might not allow prototype tyres specifically made for each top rider, it just works.