The race weekend at Jerez passed more or less as I thought it would. All the championships within the WorldSBK series were wrapped up bar one – the main prize. The results played into Jonathan Rea’s hands with his points total remaining the same as when he arrived in Spain. With only one round left and the arithmetic no longer adding up for Chaz Davies, it comes down to the last dice and a dual between the Kawasaki boys, Rea and Sykes. It is a bit of a one sided battle however as Rea only needs 3 points in race one to secure the crown.

If you discount the top three this year, the best of the rest are the Honda pairing of Van Der Mark and Hayden. Aside from the wet race at Lausitzring, the Hondas’ are the only ones that have been able to break the monopoly of Kawasaki and Ducati’s podium places.

With Honda’s domination in MotoGP it is often felt that the WorldSBK team greatly underperform, James Toseland last won the championship for them in 2007. What many people don’t realize is that the current Superbike squad is essentially a private team and is a long way off of the full HRC effort that saw Kocinski and Edwards win their titles on the Castrol Honda machines.

Honda Europe’s Head of Motorsport, Robert Watherston, was keen to have a chat with me on Sunday morning. He didn’t want to talk about racing, however. As a fellow Scotsman he just wanted to gloat that his Glasgow Celtic had beaten my Motherwell 2-0 in the football the day before. He wasn’t getting off that lightly though and I asked him about the prospects for next year with the new Fireblade and the introduction of Stefan Bradl to the team, and I pointed out that fact that outside the top three his current riders were comfortably the next best.

He was pragmatic about the fact that in the Superbike class Honda always set out to build the best road bike possible. HRC have no involvement in the race machine development so it is up to individual teams to develop their own race package unlike Ducati, Kawasaki, Aprilia etc who have used the race programme to develop the road going models of their 1000cc superbikes; Kawasaki being the latest with the launch of the Ninja ZX-10RR at Intermot last week.

Watherston was quick to point out that Kawasaki’s Superbike race programme is the best they have. They haven’t had a MotoGP presence since 2008 so this is where all their knowledge and expertise is being channeled. He was extremely proud of the fact that the current Honda WSBK team has achieved everything as a purely European project. He acknowledged that Nicky Hayden has brought a new level of analysis to the team and I myself know that the mechanics have been amazed at just how much he wants to ride the bike, try different settings and push to be as fast as possible on each given day.

Hayden almost played a crucial part in settling the rider’s championship at the weekend. If he had managed to get to, and pass Tom Sykes in race two, the title would have gone to Rea. What was interesting to me was that this was a race in what you would describe as ‘normal’ conditions and at the end he was lapping faster than the Kawasaki’s. They themselves hadn’t in anyway rolled off the throttle as Rea was desperately trying to keep Sykes at bay, who himself was pushing as hard as he could to keep his title hopes alive.

It augurs well then that if – as Watherston suggests – the new bike is a step up, Honda could be in amongst the title fight next year.

There were various rumours around at the weekend about the calendar for next year with nearly all of the permanent journalists having face time with Championship Director, Daniel Carrera. It would seem that the round at Sepang is indeed dead and buried. A couple of interesting options have come up however.

Dorna had inherited some financial woes from Infront Sport over the race at Portimao and the position apparently didn’t approve over the next few years, hence it’s exclusion from the calendar this season. It would seem that an agreement has been reached with the local authorities and promoters in terms of finances and its place on the calendar may be re-instated in 2017. Another circuit ready to make a possible return is Brno in the Czech Republic. A hugely popular venue for riders, teams and fans it would be a welcome addition to the series. Sadly it’s seems this weekend’s race in Jerez will be the last. The current contract has come to an end and there would appear to be little desire to renew it. Dorna are keen to have another race in Spain and discussions are taking place with Valencia and possibly also Montmelo at Barcelona.

The wildcard entry for next year would be Argentina. Dorna’s technical Director Gregorio Lavilla has visited the track, Autodromo Villicum, in San Juan. Construction has to be completed and the circuit homologated by the FIM but all concerned are confident that this will done and it should appear on the calendar for October 2017.

Currently there are ten rounds that have contracts for next year and the plan is to have a maximum of 14 so we will no doubt see some developments over the coming weeks. So we are literally on to the last leg and the final race under the floodlights at Losail. I will need to be creative if I am going to find my little glass of Sunday night sherry there however.

Photo by GeeBee Images