I am heading home from the first round of the Superbike Championship with a distinct feeling of deja vu. I imagined that in each race Tom Sykes set off at the front, pursued by teammate Jonathan Rea with Davies Guigliano et al in tow. As the race progressed Sykes faded and Rea took over to have a ding-dong battle with Davies. But that was last year, right?

At face value it sounds a familiar story. The results will show that the podium places looked pretty much the same as they were at the end of the 2015 season. It was a little bit subtler than that, however.

I thought the racing last weekend was some of the best we have seen for a long time. Lap after lap there was a string of seven riders almost glued to each other and I honestly couldn’t call who was going to win. It was also great to see Michael van der Mark leading on the Honda with Hayden not far behind. I thought Rea had pushed too hard throughout both races and was going to be mugged on the final lap by any one of the four in his slipstream. Fair play to JR for holding steady but hopefully the seeds are sown for some exciting action this season.

I bumped into a couple of punters who echoed my views at the end of the race on Sunday whilst I was shooting the podium from the other side of Gardner Straight. They had ridden down from Sydney and hadn’t been at a WorldSBK at Phillip Island for a few years, preferring the MotoGP event. They were both surprised at how close the racing had been and also how relaxed the atmosphere was. They also liked the much-talked about Saturday race format as it gave a bit more purpose to spectating over the whole weekend. So it looks like Dorna have at least two new converts to the format and the racing. ‘Step by step’ as the World Champion would say.

There were a few small news stories over the weekend but mainly people were happy to be back racing, although at the same time contradicting themselves by saying that “the season starts too early” and “it’s always a struggle to get things ready”. But here we are off-and-running.

The main news for me was that it is pretty certain that Monza will be struck off the calendar. A pre-season visit from Dorna’s Gregoria Lavilla and the FIM’s Safety Delegates to check on the planned improvements to the track revealed that work hadn’t even been approved let alone started. The debate occurring now is where to go. When Dorna released the 2016 calendar they announced that Vallelunga in Italy was the official reserve circuit. However, it would appear that the July date where Monza sits is not available and a week or two later would move into the Italian holiday MONTH of August and we couldn’t have a race then could we!

The betting on a replacement is currently on a trip to Portugal but unlikely to be Portimao and probably Estoril. Although I heard Istanbul and Brno mentioned as well. All of which would be great tracks to race at but means that I will be hitting the keyboard hard this week booking hotel options for all eventualities.

The wonders of modern technology mean that I can send this from the plane on the way home. However, now that I have a degree of satisfaction that I have done something productive in the last 20 hours I can get back to the gin and tonics and the movies. My choice of viewing on the last leg is The Legend of Barney Thomson to re-assimilate my Glasgow parlance – not one for the kids though!

Words and pic by Graeme Brown/GeeBee images