WorldSBK boss confirms the crucial reason behind new 2024 rules
Although the show over the last few seasons has been spectacular, the amount of riders and teams able to challenge for wins in WorldSBK has been fairly limited.
Alvaro Bautista, Toprak Razgatlioglu and Jonathan Rea have combined to dominate the sport since 2021, but recent changes to the rules in the form of a minimum rider and bike weight, crankshaft and balancing shaft changes and defined rev limits have been made alongside other changes in a bid to bring the field closer.
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Another change includes fuel tank capacity and fuel tank flow which will hopefully bring different bikes closer in terms of top speed.
The WorldSBK Executive Director said this about getting everyone to agree: “There’s a track and you need to brake and accelerate, so maybe you’re going faster around the track if you make a bike that accelerates more and has better rideability and more grip.
“You need to combine the show being done in a correct way, safely enough and one that challenges all participants.
“Everyone needs to wake up and think they can win. If you lose that, you lose the competition and then even the ones winning will leave the competition because there is no reward with that victory.
“This is the concept that everyone needed to understand. Our job was to convince the guy that only has a project in mind to make his bike better to take him out of that scope, and say, ‘think a bit about the wider’; this was the challenge.
“When you need to convince people, you need to take them out from their comfort zone which, for the winning ones, is to not touch anything.
“Any manufacturer wants to win races like they did in our last race at Portimao. If we do nothing, maybe someone will leave. If others left, then the winning ones probably would too as they’ll say the Championship has no challenge and it’s easy to win.
“The best way is a manufacturer wins but having difficulties; a win is more rewarding when you have to sweat it out until the last corner.”
On the subject of RPM’s, Lavilla stressed that they will not be reduced any further unless non competitive teams have superconcessions.
“RPMs will not be reduced anymore except if some manufacturers that aren’t competitive have superconcessions,” added Lavilla. “The worry of the superconcessions is that you give something extra to someone to be competitive, but no one knows, when you put a part on your machine, if you will gain 0.1 seconds or one second.
“What was agreed that if someone fits a part and goes faster than anyone else, but take out that part you’ll go again below, you leave the part but you level with the rpms. This is the only thing the rpms can be modified.”
