WSBK News

Yamaha's Noriyuki Haga will not compete in this weekend's season-ending WSBK races at Brands Hatch after the Court or Arbitration of Sport ruled turned down his appeal against his three week ban and 45 point deduction which stems from the first round of the 2000 season in South Africa.

Double Y2K race winner Neil Hodgson will finally get his chance to return to the World Superbike series on a permanent basis, after the GSE Ducati team announced that it would graduate next season.

The 2000 season may not have yielded all that was expected of it after Anthony Gobert's emotional victory for Bimota at Phillip Island, the firm dropping out of the World Superbike Championship mid-season after several proposed sponsorship deals fell through but despite that set-back the fiery Au

Four times World Superbike Champion Carl Fogarty has announced his retirement from bike racing after failing to recover sufficiently from his arm-breaking accident at Phillip Island this past April.

Australia's Mark Willis had a successful diversion to his commitments in his year's GP500 world championship when he won the Bol d'Or 24-hour race at Magny-Cours over the weekend.

Redundant WSBK star Anthony Gobert will pilot the Virgin Mobile Yamaha in both the British Superbike series, and the second Brands Hatch World round.

With the track dry for virtually the first time this weekend, Noriyuki Haga wowed the packed Assen grandstands with a superlative performance in the final race of the day, just rewards for the thousands of supporters who braved the early morning rain.

Brands Hatch Leisure Group has confirmed that it will be hosting the final round of the FIM Superbike World Championship on the 13-15 October 2000.

With the perennially unlucky James Haydon and Haruchika Aoki being forced to withdraw from the race after the morning warm up and Massimo De Silvestro and Claude Alain Jaggi not being permitted to start due to their painfully slow qualifying times, 32 bikes lined up on a muggy startline for the f

The Suzuka 8Hrs claimed its first victim in 23 years today, after a Japanese rider was killed in a high-speed crash.

In reality it has only been three months but for Carl Fogarty it must have seemed like a lifetime. Foggy has finally been given medical clearance by his doctors to begin training once again, allowing the Blackburn rider to re-build the muscle in his broken left arm.

In the wake of the TIA's decision to uphold Noriyuki Haga's ban and loss of points following his drugs test failures at Kyalami and Monza, Yamaha have taken their appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Suzuki's Italian war-horse Frankie Chili has vowed to cut into Colin Edwards' points lead at Laguna Seca this weekend despite having a badly broken collarbone and seven pins in his shoulder.

In several rounds of the World Superbike Championship, the local wild card riders are considered nothing more than a nuisance, slow and untidy with a tendency not to get out of the way whilst being lapped. Not so at Laguna Seca.

On Friday afternoon the FIM released a statement saying that after careful consideration, Yamaha's appeal against Noriyuki Haga's one month ban and deduction of his South Africa points, had failed.

Rumours in the World Superbike paddock at Valencia suggest that Bimota could be returning to the fold in the near future, less than a month after they announced their temporary withdrawal from the championship due to a lack of finance.

The only experience many of the World Superbike riders will have of the 2.95 mile Valencia track will be the three day test in March in which Honda's Colin Edwards emerged fastest.

The troubled Bimota outfit have been forced to temporarily withdraw from the World Superbike Championship after a deal with Levi's fell through leaving the team with very little sponsorship revenue.

It is a good thing that no-one in the factory Ducati team has a weak heart because if they did, they wouldn't last too long in the pit garage this year. Emotions have gone from the highs of victory to the depths of despair and back again in a matter of months.

Yamaha's dreams of clinching the 2000 World Superbike crown may be in tatters with the suspension of Noriyuki Haga but they have good reason to smile about their future prospects.

1. Troy Bayliss AUS Ducati 14 laps. 2. Akira Yanagawa JAP Kawasaki 0.202. 3. Noriyuki Haga JAP Yamaha 0.748. 4. Colin Edwards USA Honda 0.799.

Yamaha rider Noriyuki Haga was at his spectacular best at Hockenheim on Sunday afternoon, snatching victory away from Colin Edwards at the last moment to give both himself and his Yamaha team a much needed boost.

Japanese Yamaha star Noriyuki Haga has incurred the wrath of the International Disciplinary Court for failing two drug tests in the first five rounds of the 2000 World Superbike championship.

Colin Edwards put any lingering doubts over the sheer power of the Castrol Honda straight out of the window by dominating the time-sheets throughout Friday practice.