just stepped up to Superbikes but he was quick , very quick . And Iannone hadn ’ t forgotten how to handle himself on track and was clearly getting along just fine with his new GoEleven Team . Of the established front runners who had swapped brands , Toprak was making the BMW perform better than we ’ d seen it perform in anyone else ’ s hands and whilst Rea was making progress on the Yamaha , he wasn ’ t getting to grips with it quite as well as Toprak was with the BMW .
TYRE WEAR FORCES PIT-STOP Murmurings out of the final pre-season test run on the Phillip Island track on the Tuesday before Round One suggested tyre wear was an issue . A big issue . PI has always been tough on tyres but the newly relaid track , whilst superbly grippy , was abrading tyres to the extent that it was becoming obvious that no compound would last race distance in either Superbike or Supersport classes . Almost inevitably , a rule change , on safety grounds , meant that the Superbike races were reduced from twenty-two to twenty laps and riders would have a mandatory tyre change , well , actually , a complete wheel change , no later than lap eleven . To negate the obvious advantage that the singlesided swingarm bikes , i . e . Ducati , have which would make their wheel changes much quicker , a minimum time was set so that a rider could not exit pitlane earlier than 1m 3s after they had entered pitlane . There is no question that this mid race stop had an impact on the racing . For some spectators , especially those standing on pitlane roof , it was a bit of a bonus to see the teams practice and then execute wheel changes to ensure their rider left pitlane exactly 1m 3s after entering pitlane . But from a race perspective , it was far from ideal with different riders changing wheels on different laps and disrupting the flow of on track action . Was the situation avoidable ? You would have thought so . Surely there was some way to measure or predict tyre wear so as to not require last minute rule changes and to reduce the spectacle of full-length races . Hopefully no repeat next year and tyres will be available that can last full race distance .
THE RACING On a brighter note , the quality of the racing very much made up for the tyre problems . In Tissot Superpole , it was Bulega who topped the
60 KIWI RIDER