JOEY DUNLOP: The Definitive Biography by Stuart. Barker

Author:Stuart. Barker [Barker, Stuart.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789465051
Google: d0iWzgEACAAJ
Publisher: John Blake Publishing, Limited
Published: 2021-10-15T23:27:35.276108+00:00

CHAPTER 12

FOGGY

‘HE WAS NO SPRING CHICKEN, THEN, FOR SURE, AND HE WASN’T THE FASTEST GUY IN THE WORLD ON SHORT CIRCUITS.’

Carl Fogarty

The World Superbike championship was first held in 1988 and has since become the premier series for production-based, four-stroke motorcycles. When it started, the TT Formula One world championship was still in full swing, meaning there was a crossover period when some riders competed in both championships. The biggest difference was that WSB operated solely on purpose-built short circuits, whereas the TTF1 series still took in several pure roads events. But otherwise, the two championships were incredibly similar. Something had to give.

‘I think there are two reasons why WSB went from strength to strength while F1 disappeared,’ says Mick Grant. ‘First of all, the organisers can’t make any money from road circuits because they can’t charge people to watch. And in racing, money is the be-all and end-all. The second reason is that some of the top riders would not race on public roads. In my career I had to race on roads as well as circuits, otherwise the factories didn’t want you. By the 1980s, you could almost make a choice which way you wanted to go, and the main names chose short-circuit racing. But I think the main reason is that they couldn’t make any money out of it. The North West 200 is one of the best-attended spectator events in Europe. Imagine if you could charge 150,000 people £30 a head – I’d still be racing!’

There had at one point been plans to run both series, though with radically different-looking bikes, according to F1 star Paul Iddon. ‘The original plan was to have both F1 and World Superbike championships, but with WSB running big American-style, sit-up-and-beg bikes. But I think the manufacturers got involved and wanted a series for race replica bikes like the Honda RC30. They also didn’t want any world championship round to be at the TT, so the writing was on the wall for F1.’

According to Barry Symmons, it was the sheer danger of the F1 championship that proved to be its undoing. ‘I think one of the reasons why F1 died was because Paolo Flammini did a much better job promoting the World Superbike championship. He realised that people wanted to see big four-strokes going round, and that it wasn’t the best PR to have riders racing around stone walls and sometimes crashing into them. He also realised that a lot more people would be interested in racing at places like Misano and Mugello than at the Isle of Man. The tighter tuning regulations in WSB also meant that teams could buy road bikes and go racing at a fairly low cost.’

The first-ever World Superbike race was held at Donington Park on Sunday, 3 April 1988, and Joey Dunlop not only raced in it, he also finished on the podium. For that one meeting only, there was an unusual points-scoring system in place: despite there being two legs, results were combined to

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