“Age and experience will always beat out youth and inexperience.” —Tonny Robbins

Its been a week since the World Superbike races at Brno but I’m just now getting caught up enough to comment. Consider this late posting a little case of time travel going back a week. For another instance of time travel, just watch the races…

Race one looked like the calendar had rolled back to the first races of the season. Troy Corser took his Corona Suzuki to the front on the first lap and never looked back. Just like the early races, Corser was untouchable. The battle for second, on the other hand, was much more contemporary with the Ducati’s maintaining their recent return to form. Even more exciting, Chris Walker had his Kawasaki in the mix, meaning that perhaps the green team has made a step forward with their bike. In the end, the two Ducati teammates seemed to have burned the last vestiges of their friendship which resulted in some harsh passes. Eventually, it was Toseland that handed out the last harsh pass over Laconi and thus earned the middle step on the podium. Walker trailed behind for forth and Chili charged through the field for an eventual fifth place finish. Impressive stuff considering this was his fifth top five finish of the season. In fact, except for his DNF at the first round, the 40 year old Italian has finished in the top 10 at every race.

The second race was exciting from the beginning as Laconi hit the front and started pulling a lead only to have the race red flagged after someone’s bike lunched it’s motor and sprayed oil on the track. On the restart, it was Corser who returned everything to its normal order by again getting to turn one first and leading the race. It was another flashback, this time to race one, as Corser started to pull away while the Ducati teammates again went at each other, this time slight further down the order. Then the surprise of the season…Haga, on his under-performing Yamaha, suddenly charged forward to lead Corser after starting from 18th on the grid. Not only did he lead but he actually pulled away to win. This performance perhaps indicates that Yamaha has finally made the changes necessary to become competitive but it remains to be seen if this win will give Haga the confidence to run at the front for the remainder of the season. Given that Nitro Nori was expected to be a challenger for the title this year, his performance thus far has been abysmal with only one other podium appearance and only three other top five finishes this season. As for the rest of the finishers, it was Corser who cruised home for second and continued to extend his points lead over Vermeulen and Laconi. Third was a determined Chris Vermeulen who is still grasping for the rapidly vanishing chances of a Superbike championship. Forth a surprisingly strong finish by Norick Abe, again perhaps indicating that Yamaha has turned a corner. Continuing his trend, Chili turned in yet another top five finish. Go Frankie!

The best news: with both Kawasaki and Yamaha having strong performances at Brno the final ingredients may finally be falling into place to boost the WSBK series into the best motorcycle racing series on the planet. A little bad blood between the Ducati teammates will crank the intensity level to 11. Having guys like Walker and Abe up front with their over-the-edge riding style is the final icing on the cake. Why, oh, why can’t we just fast forward two weeks to the upcoming Brands Hatch round?

But ultimately, it was seeing old guys Corser, Haga and Chili up front that made Brno seem more like 1998 that 2005. These guys are the legends of the WSBK championship and it is awesome to see them still on the bleeding edge of superbike racing. Hopefully, the young guys like Vermeulen, Muggeridge, Neukirchner, Pitt and Lanzi can learn from these guys.

[image from the Motorcycle News web page.]