GixxerPete

Yeah I saw your "bait" and knew exactly where you were going with that, but it's apples and oranges. Four stroke MX bikes are the way of the future, not the past like V-twins. Every major player in MX racing makes four stroke bikes, vs just Ducati racing V-twins, so the rules aren't changed to give the one 1950s hold out an advantage over the modern powerplants, like in WSBK.

Why shouldn't Ducati have to build a competitive bike within the rules or suck it? Why do the rules have to constantly be changed so their antiquated design can still be competitive? It's certainly not better for racing, as WSBK enjoyed some of the best parity of all the major racing series, right up until they changed the rules and Ducati started dominating again.

How is giving an inferior design handicaps to be competitive good for racing? Racing should be about what works, not some silly sense of nostalgia.

Gee I sure miss drum brakes, weren't they great? Sure they don't have as much stopping power, they fade way quicker, the suck when then get wet, but they have a certain character I miss so over the "generic" (but far superior) dics brakes. We should bring them back to racing, and then change the rules so all it can still be competitive to the far superior disc brakes.

That is EXACTLY how it is with V-twins in WSBK. And again, that's good for racing how? I guess some people are only happy when the rule are such that Ducati can dominate. The only thing that's truly "good for racing" is Ducati dominating.

wheezl

First of all I agree that the rules for V-twins in superbike go too far and make it boring as hell to watch. So I don't.

However, 4 strokes need too much extra displacement to compete with 2 strokes. While a 4 stroke is better for the environment and general street riding it really has no place on the track where it needs special rules in order to compete with 2 strokes. However the manufacturers don't want to spend money doing R&D on shit they can't sell. That is certainly fair. Superbike is based on production bikes and that is swell. I'd rather have a boring race series and have the option of buying a 1098 or 848. Seriously if it was all about performance there'd be more awesome V-4 bikes we could buy. I-4 exists because it performs well and is cheap to make for the Big 4. Admittedly Yamaha seems to make a nice I-4 800cc.. but that's about it.

Really it doesn't matter how much displacement it takes to make a particular design effective, it just matters that the rules keep them balanced. Unfortunately the rules are currently tilted in Ducati's favor and that is a damn shame.