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| Gratuitous Nicky Hayden shot. |
Straight from the Saturday Night Specials shootout at a backwoods U.S. dirt track, the idea of putting fast riders behind slow riders at the start and hoping something interesting happens reeks of desperation and a lack of vision from the series organizers.
It is the height of hubris for an Internet blogger to say to the owners of a multi-million-dollar international corporation, "Well, here's what you should be doing with your property." Warning: Such hubris is coming in about three paragraphs.
But, first a word of sympathy. Prior to Dorna's purchase of the Superbike series, it was a direct competitor to GP racing. So it was relatively easy to take certain steps to build and maintain popularity. If the other series was doing well, steal everything you could from them, then add what was missing. See prime-time broadcast television, United States, history of.
Now Dorna owns both. And robbing from one to feed the other is a zero-sum proposition. So it's not just a matter of one series emulating the other to steal audiences. Dorna now needs to figure out how to sustain World Superbikes in a manner that doesn't take away from the popularity of MotoGP, and prop up MotoGP while keeping Superbike healthy.
OK, here's the hubris part. What Dorna needs is vision.
First, a hard look at what World Superbike offers that MotoGP can't. From the outside, it appears to be two things - lower costs and showroom relatability.
By racing production-based machines, the price of competing is reduced dramatically. You can, realistically, go racing for podiums, or at least top-six finishes, in Superbike for $100,000 per vehicle. You might - might - be able to do that in Moto2. Definitely not in MotoGP nor Moto3, where costs have escalated well beyond the initial intent of that class.
And by racing production-based machines, manufacturers can see a clear connection between what is raced on the track and what is sold to the public. This can leverage dealer, importer and distributor interest in the series.
Between the two, Superbike always will have a role. Companies will always want a showcase for their latest and greatest street machines. The lower cost of competing means that it doesn't take direct manufacturer involvement to put together a team to compete in the series. And if necessary, Dorna can prop up manufacturer involvement with subsidies, and get much more bang for the buck than in MotoGP.
The next step is to position World Superbikes as a placeholder. Trying to gather huge TV audiences is a mistake, a mistake that is understandable for Dorna to make because it is, essentially, a television production and promotion company. Superbike is the series you sell to the tracks that can't afford MotoGP, or when manufacturers want to race in a particular market. Do that, and you prevent another series - like, say, BSB - from coming in and staging races and stealing your audience. Sometimes, it's not about the profit you make, it's about the losses you avoid.
Short-sighted band-aids - inverted grids, naked bikes - work about as well as band-aids. They quickly fall off and stop doing any good. Dorna needs a long-term vision that understands that close racing is only part of the package. The AMA's old Harley 883 series had very close racing. It's dead. The Harley XR1200 series offered amazing-looking racing. It's dead.
Showcases for the latest and greatest streetbikes, rules that allow inexpensive modifications that bring bike performance closer, and a tight, packed weekend schedule that a racing fan can afford and understand are the things that bring in the audiences. Staying the course and building a solid platform with Superbikes in their proper place in the pantheon will do far more than gimmicks to make sure that in five years, Superbikes will not go the way of the XR1200 series.
