Welcome to our new World Superbike coverage. We report on the antics of the MotoGP has-beens and wannabes who inhabit the top production class. Anyone can buy a road-going superbike, spend a hundred grand on it and line up in Free Practise 1 with these guys before being black flagged after 3 laps and escorted off the premises.
Aragon
This time, the action was at the excellent Aragon track in Spain, best known for its beautiful wall.
The Action
The Aragon weekend turned out to be a 3-way battle between almost-champ Alvaro Bautista, multiple champ Jonathan Rea and reigning champ Toprak Razgatlioglu. In other words, the MotoGP has-been, the MotoGP should’ve-been and the MotoGP will-be.
Bautista was the king of the weekend with 2 dominant victories and a 2nd place. MotoGP fans will remember him as being impressively quick on his good days, a bit of a crasher and only somewhat bigger than Dani Pedrosa. World Superbike has changed him, though. While Alvaro is still about the size of an 8 year old girl, now he also has her hairstyle. In fact the only way to tell them apart would be that 8 year old girls aren’t usually quite so heavily tattooed as Alvaro Bautista, unless you’re in a place like _______ (I’ll let you finish that joke according to your own prejudices).
The great thing about World Supers right now is that the top 3 are all nice guys, there’s not a Max Biaggi amongst them. But there’s a fair amount of needle between these three likeable gentlemen. So their overtaking moves are always just a little bit too needlessly aggressive. The kind of pass that would make a Bradley Smith cry for a week would be considered completely normal in WSBK. It makes for great action, and it’s why Bradders never considered racing in the top production class.
The Horror
Scott Redding will also be familiar to MotoGP fans. He’s quick, he’s huge and he keeps getting fired for honestly telling teams what he thinks of them and their bike. (Scott’s considering running a rear thumb brake, so he can keep one foot in his mouth at all times). At the end of last year he left Ducati “by mutual consent” and signed for the BMW team. Well, when we say signed for, we obviously mean he made an X in crayon on the contract. (Jack Miller signs with a thumbprint as he hasn’t learned the alphabet as far as the letter X yet).
His BMW experience so far has been like a horror movie, and not a good one. Maybe Alien 4 or something, where it’s more sad than scary. A guy who should be battling for wins is now battling to score points at all. Luckily, we can rely on Scott to eventually part with BMW “by mutual consent” after telling ze Germans vot he thinks of zem and zeir gott-forsaken bike. Then he can sign for someone with a decent machine rather than a fixer-upper with unlimited potential like the Beemer.
The Comedy
The first World Supersport race of the weekend had one of the strangest finishes in history. In the middle of the fast, sweeping last turn of the Aragon track, the leader Baldassarri started to crash. In fact, he had pretty much finished crashing. He had just reached that millisecond where the bike is sideways enough that there are only two possibilities. Either the front lets go and the rider slides into the gravel, or the rear suddenly grips and highsides the rider into low earth orbit.
At that exact millisecond, he collided with the 2nd placed Aegeter, who was going round the outside. So now the only question was whether they would attack each other in the gravel trap.
But instead, Baldassarri’s bike somehow bounced back onto its wheels and let him continue round the corner and win the race, while Aegeter ran wide and had to settle for second.
Even after watching the incident several times, it was obvious that what had happened was physically impossible. By violating the laws of physics, the two riders had provided one of the most entertaining final corners ever. People will be talking about it for years.