Spanish rider
Fonsi Nieto was the man to watch in the Suzuki Alstare team at the start of the year as he notched up a win in the opening Losail round, but he is still searching to recapture that early season form and lies in fifth place on 107 points.
1994 AMA national champion, and double WSBK champion
Troy Corser is right behind in sixth, but the 36-year-old Australian is still waiting to record his first win for the Yamaha Motor Italia WSB team in his second year of trying.
The two Sterilgarda Go Eleven riders, on their factory-assisted Ducati 1098 RS ‘customer' machines, are next up in the standings,
Ruben Xaus on 90 points and Max Biaggi on 65. The Spaniard has been able to challenge the frontrunners on occasions and is a former USA Round winner (in 2003), while multiple GP winner Biaggi suffered a second dose of misfortune at Monza when he was taken out by a fellow competitor and ended up with broken bones for the second time this season. His title chances appear to be slipping away.
On the same quota of points as Biaggi is another rising star,
Ryuichi Kiyonari (Hannspree Ten Kate Honda). The 25-year-old from Saitama in Japan almost scored a sensational slipstreaming win in race 2 at Monza and now that he has his Honda CBR1000RR dialed in, the two-times British Superbike champion will surely also be a contender in the remaining rounds.
Spain's Gregorio Lavilla is the first true ‘privateer' in the standings and he completes the top 10 on the VentAxia VK Honda, ahead of a brace of factory riders,
Michel Fabrizio (Ducati Xerox) and
Yukio Kagayama (Suzuki Alstare).
The two riders of the fifth manufacturer represented in this year's championship, Kawasaki, are still outside the top 10 in the overall classification, but the last couple of rounds have seen Frenchman Régis Laconi and Japan's
Makoto Tamada, both previous Superbike race winners, make some progress on their ZX-10R machines.
