The 2005 road race season started this past weekend with the WSBK opener in Losail, Qatar. Maybe its has been the long winter drought or maybe its the rules changes but it turned out to be a great race and has really whetted my appetite for more.

The big winner this past weekend was the Alstare Suzuki team, as their riders Troy Corser and Yukio Kagayama split the two victories. After Alstare Suzuki struggled for years with their underpowered GSXR-750 against the full might of Ducati, this past weekend had to be a long overdue compensation for all their hard work. What’s more, their rider’s battle with Ducati mounted Regis Laconi showed that the team’s GSXR-1000 has the power to hold off the Duc even giving it the benefit off the draft. That has to have Francis Batta and the entire Alstare Corona Suzuki team dancing in the streets. They have dominated pre-season testing and now swept the first race of the season.

This will also have filled the sails of Troy Corser. This first race win was the final reward for his four miserable seasons with the Foggy Petronas team. He has been saying for years that he had the talent and desire to win races but not the bike. He is certainly backing that statement up already aboard the Suzuki. It fact it was downright eerie to see how he immediately returned to his pre-Petronas style of jumping out early in the race, showing his trademark smooth riding and then turning quick consistent laps until taking the checkers for a win. He seemed on track for a repeat in race two but was slowed by a worn front tire.

Kagayama somehow managed to surprise even more than Corser. He took his maiden World Superbike win in only the second race of the season and looked untouchable for the second two thirds off race two. He was also a stark contrast to Corser. Where the Australian has always been deceptively smooth on the bike, always looking much slower than the stop watch actually reveals, Japanese rider Kagayama seemed to be on the ragged edge from the first corner till the finish line. He was visibly pushing the front tire into the faster corners and every corner exit was a near-highside with the bike violently bucking and weaving as the rear tire repeated broke loose. The British motorcycling press have long heralded Yukio’s wild riding and our first glimpse certainly backs that up. I think it will be impossible for Kagayama to maintain this for the entire season without a crash, like the one that put him out of the British Superbike Series title hunt, but has plenty of time to learn how to keep the speed and loose the recklessness. Haga had the same out of control look for most of his first Yamaha tour of duty which resulted in some spectacular accidents. Whether he crashes or not, its obvious from day one that Yukio will be one to watch this season.

What about the others? Well. Laconi showed he can dig deep and race for the win. I think he started last season overly confident and his missing the 2004 WSBK title seems to have given him focus. He was the only person anywhere near the pace of the two Suzukis. Toseland, on the second factory Ducati, fought hard but wasn’t quite on the same pace as the front three. The hoard of Yamahas also appeared fast but seemed to be just a little down on the leaders. Haga was surprising slow over the weekend while his teammate Pitt was surprisingly fast. Abe, one of the few riders with prior race experience on the circuit, made a better than expected showing while his teammate Gimbert turned a solid qualifying run into a dismal race results, again a surprise. Crowd favorite Chili continued his inconsistent record by having a mechanical failure in race one and then a fantastic fifth in race two. The 41 year old continues to stick it to the young guys. Honda’s only other notable finish for the weekend was Vermeulen’s forth in the same race. For those, like myself, who forecast that Vermeulen would fight for the title this year it wasn’t a particularly auspicious start. Hopefully the two Ten Kate riders are still recovering from last week’s flu. The biggest disappointment for Honda had to be Ben Bostrom. After crashing his only bike in practice he had to ride a near-stock bike in the races to a finish outside the points in race one and a DNF in race two. The Renegade team will have a lot of work to do before the next race weekend. Kawasaki also showed they still have a big step to make as their riders struggled to get into the top ten. Sounds like they need some of the same magic growth potion that they put into their MotoGP effort last season for their two WSBK teams this season. Finally, the Foggy Petronas boys of McCoy and Martin showed that they will be doing rain dances all season. On even a semi-dry track, they are so badly outclassed they were luck to qualify. Its going to be a long season in that pit.

The teams now have a month to learn from Losail and prepare for their next race at Phillip Island in April.

[image from the Team Suzuki Racing web site.]