Like last year, the month of October will be decisive for the assignment of the Superbike World Champion title. At Estoril, the leader of the standings Toprak Razgatlioglu, will in fact have a first opportunity to mathematically close the games, extending his lead over Nicolò Bulega, first of his pursuers with 375 points, by another 23 points. Thirty-nine less than the 414 scored by the Turkish rider in the eight of the ten season's rounds he has contested (Toprak was forced to skip the races at Magny-Cours and Cremona, due to the mild pneumothorax he picked up in French free practice).
A situation, that of Razgatlioglu, diametrically opposite from a year ago. With two rounds to go in the season, the current BMW rider was in fact chasing the leader Alvaro Bautista and was forced to go on the attack in Portimao, to try to counter the Spaniard and take the fight for the championship to the grand finale at Jerez.
It is not only Toprak's position, however, that has changed this past year. The ballast added to Alvaro's Ducati V4, as well as the numerous team and manufacturer changes we witnessed on the eve of this season, have in fact produced a markedly different picture from the one that had emerged after the first ten rounds of 2023.
Razgatlioglu moving up, Bautista down
An upheaval of the formbook that is evident by comparing the points and the position that some of the major protagonists of the championship now have in the standings, with those they had last year, again at the end of the round at Aragon.
Having mentioned the step forward taken by Razgatlioglu by leaving the Yamaha R1 to step onto the BMW M 1000 RR (with which he scored 8 more victories, increasing his average performance per Round by 6 points), one cannot fail to mention the backward step taken by Bautista in these 371 days.
The winter preparation conditioned by the aftermath of the crash suffered in the Jerez test at the end of 2023, combined with the handicap of having to adapt to a weighted bike, has affected the Spanish champion's performance in no small way. Struggling to regain the right feeling on the bike, Alvaro has been unable to hold his own against Toprak and fight to reconfirm his ranking. And with only four wins in the season, compared to 21 last year, he has accumulated a whopping 171 fewer points than 2023, plummeting to third place in the standings.
Rea, Bassani and Rinaldi: when change doesn't pay.
Some changes come with a silver lining. Jonathan Rea knows something about that. Third of the three "Titans" who have been battling it out in recent World Superbike seasons, the northern Irish rider occupied third place in the standings after the first ten rounds of 2023, with a haul of 328 points on his Ninja. A full 237 more points than the six-time world champion has earned in this, his first, very complicated, year riding the Yamaha R1. Marked by a series of problems, crashes, injuries, and a feeling with bike and team that appeared much less idyllic than we would have expected after the first preseason tests.
Explaining this downturn, however, are not only the adaptation difficulties encountered by Rea. In fact, the strides made this year by the opponents seem greater than those of the Iwata manufacturer. This is evidenced by the fact that Andrea Locatelli, Yamaha's first point of attack, has only managed to get on the podium three times compared to six in 2023 and has dropped from fourth to sixth place in the standings, counting 78 fewer points to his credit.
For a struggling Yamaha, however, there is a Kawasaki that is proving to be quite competitive in the hands of Alex Lowes. Apart from a few stumbles here and there, distinctive of his career, the British rider seems to have found confidence and consistency since becoming the team leader. So much so that he has more than doubled the points he had this time last season.
In contrast, the ZX-10RR is proving to be an uncongenial bike for Axel Bassani. A regular presence in the Top 5 with the Ducati Motocorsa, the Feltre rider is struggling to replicate the same results with his new mount and finds himself 15th with two Rounds to go, with little more than a third of the points that secured him fifth place in the championship in 2023.
How much things can change in the space of a year has also unfortunately been discovered by Lorenzo Mauri and Michael Ruben Rinaldi. That the marriage between the Lombardy-based team and the former Aruba rider never got off the ground is incontrovertibly shown by the cold numbers. With only 61 points put together on that same bike with which Bassani was chasing him in 2023, Rinaldi has sunk outside the top 15. With a gap of 176 points compared to the points that Axel boasted at this point last season and 152 compared to those that then placed him in sixth position.
Steady progress for Petrucci
Playing it safe, it's better then to focus on continuity. A choice that is paying off in the case of Danilo Petrucci and the Barni Spark Racing team. Having found the right balance with the Bergamo-based team's Panigale, Petrux has in fact been able to obtain his first victories in the SBK world championship, hoisting himself up to fourth place in the standings and at the top of the classification reserved for Independent riders, by virtue of a haul of 277 points. Eighty-six more than the Terni rider scored in the first ten rounds of his debut season, which earned him seventh place in the championship.
An unusual fact is that this is precisely the same position as his friend and rival Andrea Iannone, who if he had debuted a year earlier, with his current 195 points, would have found himself occupying precisely seventh place, with a four-point margin over Petrux. An excellent debut, but certainly not as memorable as Bulega's, who last season would have been second only to Bautista and Razgatlioglu, with two Rounds to go.
The situation in the standings after ten Rounds.
