2023-10-20 17:07:34
On October 11, the Superbike Commission announced to everyone’s surprise the introduction of the minimum combined bike-rider weight ahead of the 2024 WorldSBK campaign. The news was unexpected, especially when this same organization had already discarded this idea last February, understanding then that it did not benefit the development of the championship.
Eight months later, the body that dictates the rules of the Superbike World Championship radically changed its mind to introduce this important change in a technical regulation that, to date, It only required a minimum weight of 168 kilos for the motorcycle, without intervening at all the body dimensions of the pilot.
In its initial press release, WorldSBK did not make it clear what the minimum weight that bike and rider should meet together would be, and although the 2024 regulation has not yet been published with all the well-specified details, the WorldSBK Executive Director, Gregorio Lavilla, has offered a series of clarifications that clear up many of the doubts we had about this substantial change.
As Lavilla explained to the official Worldsbk.com website, the motorcycles will continue to have a minimum weight “the same for everyone, 168 kilos”, and then goes on to detail how the regulations now change for those pilots who are lighter, remembering that “the difference between the pilots can be 30 kilos between the heaviest and the lightest” as can happen, for example, between Álvaro Bautista (58 kilos) and rivals of size and weight such as Danilo Petrucci (77 kilos) or Scott Redding (75 kilos).
Lavilla makes it clear that with this change “in our sport we have never intended to add 30 kilos of ballast to the lightest”, ensuring that in motorcycling it is common to see ballasts on motorcycles “which range between 8 and 10 kilos. We understand that, with the motorcycle already manufactured and with a certain weight, adding 10 kg is something enormous,” clarifies the former Spanish pilot.
The championship boss says that the decision on the minimum combined weight was made “unanimously” thanks to the agreement of “all manufacturers.” “We are going to maintain that minimum weight of the bike, with a reference weight for the rider of 80 kilos with all the equipment on. Anyone who is below that reference will have 500 grams per kilo added, from their weight up to 80 kilos.“details Lavilla to shed some light on how this new regulation will affect the lighter pilots: “That is, some of the lighter pilots will have to add 5 or 6 kilos of ballast.”
Explained another way, if, for example, Álvaro Bautista weighs 70 kilos with all the equipment on (helmet, overalls, boots and gloves), that means that He would be 10 kilos away from reaching those 80 kilos that the regulations now require.which would force Ducati to weight its Panigale V4 R with 5 kilos (half of those 10 kilos).
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Unlike the Moto2 World Championship – where there is a minimum combined weight figure between motorcycle and rider of 215 kilos – the Superbike manufacturers They have chosen to distribute the minimum weight between the motorcycle (168 kg) and the rider (80 kg) for “not having a fixed and defined number and that, over the years, the weight reference and what needs to be added can be adapted accordingly, but the rule is already there”, Gregorio says.
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