With American politics dominating the world news at the moment I came over ‘all Rumsfeld’ when thinking about the coming WorldSBK season. There are known knowns: these are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also…well, you get the picture.

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. Jonathan Rea, Tom Sykes and Chaz Davies start the season as the three hot favourites for the 2017 WorldSBK crown. That we do know. What is unknown is what each man’s form will be when the red lights go out at round one in Phillip Island in just over a month’s time.

Chaz Davies and his Ducati were on fire in the last half of the season but Rea was adamant that he had been looking at the bigger picture, one eye on the grand prize. The Kawasaki’s were blisteringly fast in testing in November but testing is not racing and Davies may still have an edge over 20 or so laps.

I am sure the Welshman will still be smarting from that last race in Qatar when Rea sat up and gifted team-mate Sykes the runner-up spot in the Championship ensuring a Kawasaki 1-2. If these three end up as runaway leaders again this year I am sure there will be a little extra edge to the racing.

The known unknowns [right, that’s enough]…but genuinely, everything else raises a question mark as to what the formbook will be. Honda have a brand new bike which is getting rave reviews from the motorcycling media but Nicky Hayden will start the season on the back foot having suffered a cruel knee injury in December whilst training, and WorldSBK rookie Bradl will be forgiven for taking a few races to get up to speed. How they will perform, especially early on, is genuinely up in the air.

A rivalry that I am looking forward to seeing rekindled is that between Eugene Laverty and Marco Melandri. Not much has been mentioned in the press about it but they famously had a fairing bashing session at Jerez in the last race of the 2013 season. Laverty won nine races in the factory Aprilia team that year and missed out on the title by 23 points but he then lost his seat to the diminutive Italian for the 2014 season, so there is no love lost. Being back on the Aprilia for this year will surely give him a high degree of confidence and he will want to prove that he is capable of winning again.

And what of Melandri? He has been going about his business at Ducati relatively quietly and not really drawing attention to himself. I know, however, that if he has his mojo back he will be a fierce competitor and will give no quarter in a scrap. I am not sure if he does it deliberately but we know from past experiences that he is not averse to making enemies on the race track.

The last unknown is how Michael VD Mark will perform on the Yamaha. His initial feeling from the tests at the end of the year were positive but ‘more work is needed’. Now I do know PR speak when I hear it, so his potential as an outright championship contender does remain unknown. The young Dutchman has the raw talent, and now with suitable experience should be able to put himself in the running. Last season the R1 impressed in brief spells but overall neither Sylvain Guintoli nor Alex Lowes were able to get the machine to perform over a full race distance every weekend.

With Melandri and Laverty returning to the paddock I do know that there will be a little more spark and this might rub off on everyone else. These characters coming together again also reminds me of pre-event PR photoshoots in years gone by when the Brit pack (if Eugene will forgive me for including him in that) would spark off each other and an undertone of needle was never too far from the surface.

The final thing we can’t predict is how the changes to the technical regulations and the grid format for race two this year will play out. The shake up to the grid is completely unprecedented and has been designed solely to spice up the competition. Whilst MotoGP has is bitter personal rivalries, WorldSBK riders are often criticised for being too nice to each other. I am not a fan of the grid changes but I can see some elbow and fairing scrapes in the first couple of laps in race two causing some fractions as the season progresses. If we get some really close racing along with a few ‘racing incidents’, and the odd inter rider Twitter storm thrown in, we could be in for an all time classic WorldSBK season.

Photo by GeeBee images/Kawasaki