Foggy Petronas Racing's Steve Martin is used to riding with a 100cc engine capacity deficit - relative to his 1000cc rivals - but the Australian still backs a potential rule change that would allow twin-cylinder machinery, as currently raced by Ducati, to have a 200cc advantage.
Prior to the Valencia weekend, FGSport issued a statement in response to growing speculation of such a rule change - by claiming that no plans were currently in place, but that WSBK should reflect road bike trends. In other words, if manufacturer(s) started building larger capacity Superbikes then 'these (capacity) changes should be mirrored in the Superbike World Championship technical regulations.'
Ducati are already rumoured to be planning just such a mass produced 1200cc Superbike, in order to match the showroom performance of the 1000cc four-cylinders produced by the likes of Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha and Kawasaki. That move makes sense to former 999 racer Martin and he's happy for them to also be allowed in the world championship - providing that they don't have an unfair advantage.
"What Ducati are saying makes sense to me, the only problem is going to be instigating it. Because who's going to know how much power they are going to have - more power or less power, I don't know," Martin told
Crash.net radio when asked about the prospect of 1200cc twins. "I agree, from a marketing point of view, Ducati want to have a 1200 as a road bike because if you ride a GSX-R1000 and a 999, the 999's more like a 600 now - it just doesn't have the power - so that's why they want to go 1200.
"Also, it will make the Ducatis a lot more standard in race form (as tuning modifications will be more restricted than at present) so just because it's a 1200 doesn't mean it'll actually be faster. It's just going to be a matter of judging what (Ducati) can and can't have for the extra cc's," Steve concluded.
