The World Superbike championship is set for an extreme makeover next season, with the organizers announcing that each round’s format will now feature three races instead of the current two races.
The rumour that something like this could happen started when the WSBK organizers and the FIM decided to terminate the World Superstock1000 championship, and some paddock voices started to speak about the possibility that the World Superbike riders would get more track time.
According to the official news, the Saturday race remains as is, unchanged, while the big news will arrive on Sunday: in the morning the riders will participate on a Sprint race – there’s no word on how many laps and points this Sprint race will get – and on Sunday afternoon there’s the third race of the weekend with a normal riding distance.
Even though World Superbike organizers say that this new three race format will give the spectators more races to watch, and riders will be able to get more track time, we’re still unsure if these kind of changes will really make the difference in the competition itself.
Last time the organizers decided to revamp the race format from the two races on Sunday to one race on Saturday and another on Sunday, and later they also decided to change the way the riders would get their grid positions, it didn’t change much in terms of actual results.
For the fans the grid formation is still a bit confusing, with riders that finish Race 1 on top having to start Race 2 from the middle of the grid, and even the races in different days haven’t been completely unanimous around World Superbike fans.
We will need to see how all this three races format plays out next season, but for riders and teams, the added race might present itself as a big problem: not only riders who crash on the Sprint race might be injured missing the last race of the weekend, but even if they don’t get injured, their teams will need to rebuild the bike from scratch. We remind you that each rider is only allowed to have one bike ready to use on track at the garage, so if a rider crashes in the Sprint race, the team will need to build a new one using the parts they have in their trucks.
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