Dorna’s CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta is a habitue of Ducati and Ferrari’s Wrooom Press Ski meeting and as always the Spanish manager- who nows also wields the power over the World Superbike championship since Bridgepoint gave him the ruling scepter – gave some interesting insights on the future of the two series.
Fans of World Superbikes can rest assured that MotoGP and WSBKS will remain two separate entities as Ezpeleta pointed out, but there will some cost limits for everyone, “This is to confirm that we will maintain the two separate championships.
One will be for motorcycles derived from production bikes [World Superbikes] and the other one will be prototypes [MotoGP].
” Also adding that for World Superbikes, “The effort is to make everyone happy, to control the costs and give similar equipment for all the riders from each manufacturer.
This ’similar equipment would be cutting the cost of the bikes, with every manufacturer present in the series obliged to supply, if requested, six bikes at the cost of 250,000 euros each per season (excluding spare parts for crash re-builds) with no limits on ECU’s, number of engines and cylinders, while Supersport bikes shouldn’t exceed 100.
000 euros and these measures should be defined by the end of May of this year.
The World Superbike Commission will also see the return of the MSMA.
Regarding the rumors that the Superstock 1000 and 600 classes may disapper have yet to be confirmed, but Ezpeleta said that if the performance of the Superstock bikes should be too close to the Superbike machines performance wise following the cost cutting measures then they will think about the economic feasibility of continuing with Superstock.
For MotoGP, the rules for the three-year period 2014 to 2016 have already be defined while they are already working on 2017.
Ezpeleta also confirmed that CRT teams can opt to using their production based equipment, but in 2014 have the option of switch to Honda’s low cost racer based on the RC213V, that will cost 1 million euros per season – and Honda has to supply up to five machines – or use Yamaha’s M1 engines at 800,000 euros per season – with the Iwata manufacturer supplying four – and continue with their own chassis maker and if they use Magneti Marelli ECU units supplied by Dorna, will have 24 liters of fuel, four more than the prototypes which should help cut the performance gap.
Another change will be that any new manufacturer who wants to enter MotoGP will have to merge with an existing team already in the series.
Regarding the future calendars, Ezpeleta said it was too early to talk, but did say that they won’t be going anywhere unless circuit promoters are willing to cover some of the cost.
WSBK and MotoGP will be living interesting times in the near future, but whether all these cost saving rules and ideas will make the races more interesting and closer remains to be seen.