News

Nine race winners so far in 25th Anniversary season

Thursday, 27 September 2012 08:37 GMT
Nine race winners so far in 25th Anniversary season

This year's Superbike season is the 25th in succession and as the rate of individual race winners week-on-week is showing, few seasons have been quite this competitive when it comes to a variety of riders fighting for a race win. The absolute record of individual race victors per season is ten, way back in 1989 when SBK racing was still in its infancy. At that time every round featured significant numbers of hot local wildcard riders, as well as the competitive regulars, so it was little wonder that the number of race winners was high.


So far in 2012 we have had nine individual race winners, and the last time that happened was in 2001, when four different manufacturers - Aprilia, Ducati, Honda and Suzuki - provided the machinery.


Now that wildcard riders are much thinner on the ground and usually not on the most competitive of machines, to have nine individual winners in only 13 rounds in 2012 - and after only 25 races not the scheduled 26 (given the cancellation of the first Monza race) - is a truly remarkable series of events.


The nine rider total started in Australia with Max Biaggi (Aprilia Racing) and Carlos Checa (Althea Racing Ducati). A first time winner came along in Assen in round three, Sylvain Guintoli, who was riding in Effenbert Ducati colours then (he would win for PATA Ducati later in the year too). Jonathan Rea (Honda World Superbike Team) was also a winner at Assen. Six races in and four different winners had come along already.


Seven races gone and we had a fifth winner, as Tom Sykes (Kawasaki Racing Team) triumphed in the only Monza race. One round later, at Donington, Marco Melandri gave BMW its historic first win ever, making them the fifth manufacturer to win in 2012, with only eight races completed.


Rea won race two in England, and from then until the first race in Silverstone it was one of the existing winners on top. All that changed when teenager Loris Baz (Kawasaki Racing Team) splashed to a brave win at Silverstone. Seven different race winners in 18 individual races.


Guintoli, Sykes, Melandri and Biaggi all recorded wins until the Nurburgring where Chaz Davies (ParkinGO MTC Aprilia) became the eighth man onto the top slot in 2012. Eugene Laverty then upped the total a notch with his win in race 2 at Portimao.


With two races left to run, there might even be a slim chance of equalling the 1989 record of winners before the season winds up in France on October 7.