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The MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship is set to see many sporting updates in the series, some which the series has never seen at such a level before. We caught up with the WorldSBK Sporting director Gregorio Lavilla, who is able to explain the thoughts behind the decisions and what sort of impact they are hoping to have on the season ahead.

2017 will see a new revised grid format for WorldSBK Race two, why has it been introduced?

“There are two main reasons we have decided to change the grid. One is trying, if possible to make the racing a bit more exciting. The second reason is the most important for me, which is trying to give teams and riders more value. They don't always have the chance to start the race from the front row, but with this format we will be giving a bit more value to these riders.

As well as this, we can also give riders another chance if they had a very bad Saturday. Personally I have to say that we knew any changes we made to next year’s grid would be really exciting, and these changes are not too dramatic. At the end of the day we looked at all the pros and cons and we hope it can bring something special.”

How important was safety – if you fully reversed the grid you would have slower bikes at the front and faster at the back - so was this was high priority?

“If we decided to go for a full reverse grid, it would have created even more question marks - even now with only three rows it has created a few.  From the safety point of view I don’t feel like it is going to be particularly dangerous, because we will have a lot of riders able to win.

Secondly the speed can depend on the riders  - for me they are all top riders – but the main difference between them will perhaps be seen from half way through the race distance. You can see the difference comes from tyre wear, how a rider can manage the race and who has done more laps during qualifying to prepare. So you can say that even in a reversed order the difference in the lap times between the nine riders in the opening laps will be very little, so I don’t think there is the safety question mark at this point.”

What happens if you qualify in the top nine and fail to finish the first race – how will that determine your grid position for the Sunday?

“Obviously if the riders who qualified in the top three crash then they are going to be more affected by this rule; but from ninth position and below there will be almost no difference. 

To determine grid position we look at race one results, and the first nine riders go directly to the first three rows and then we have the Superpole qualification. You must take away from this classification the first nine of race one because they are already there. 

Then you’re left with the Superpole list without the top nine of race one –it then takes the order of the back of the grid, it’s very simple. So the rider who’s on the top of the list and crashed out maybe goes down to tenth, but if a rider is 11th or 12th in Superpole and they crashed, they can keep the same position – these are the variables that we will have. 

One change to the World Supersport sporting regulations is the new introduction of flag to flag, with pit stops. How is this going to change things?

“We had a few races last year where it started raining but then quickly stopped, which means everyone goes out with the dry tyres even though the Supersport class has cut slick tyres.

They go with the dry tyres and at the time you stop the race for climatic conditions, the next race is declared wet, so then we have a problem. It can also cut the rhythm of the race.

So we have spoken with the Supersport teams about what they will need to have this type of system. Technically it was not much effort,  I am fairly sure that the time we define for the pit stop will be longer on the Supersport than the Superbikes. With the amount of riders we have got in the Supersport category, not all of them have pit garages so we will need a good strategy of how to place all these machines in the pit lane.

I think it is a safer solution because you can always stop and change your tyres and do your own strategy. I feel like for the riders once they stop have to start from zero again, so having flag to flag this year should work good.”