World Superbike title ignites at Phillip Island

The preliminaries have been played out, and now the real business of competition begins when the Yamaha round one of the Superbike World Championship is held at Phillip Island this weekend, featuring a host of international stars including in-form Spaniard Carlos Checa, and perennial Aussie favourite Troy Corser.

Corser (BMW) will also be joined by Josh Waters (Suzuki) and Kawasaki pairing Mark Aitchison and Bryan Staring in upholding local honour as the production-based championship makes its 21st appearance at Phillip Island.

And this one is shaping as a monumental battle, with the seven factory teams – not to mention a host of highly credentialed privateers – all evenly matched as far as machinery and personnel are concerned.

That said, Checa will go head into round one as the warm favourite after a blazing performance on his Ducati in the final pre-season test at Phillip Island on February 21-22.

The world No. 3’s best lap of 1:30.578 was well under the official lap record held by Corser, and he also eclipsed the best ever world superbike lap by nearly half a second.

“It was a very positive test and a fantastic lap time,” said Checa. “I was a bit worried before because I had not done so much testing and I arrived here and was not sure if we had enough time on the bike.

“During the winter I did a GP race, then I went to the desert, then some motocross, and it was all a bit confusing. Portugal testing was not so positive because of the weather, so I arrived here without the required full confidence.

“But we’ve been able to grow up very quick from the first day, the pace of the bike at this track is good, I feel very close with the team and that’s why I’m in this position.”

While Checa was in blazing form, Australia’s main championship hope, Corser, only finished the test session in a lowly 16th, four spots behind 24-year-old countryman Waters.

However Corser, a seven-time winner at Phillip Island, is expected to really flex his muscles when practice and qualifying begins on Friday, before the two 22-lap races are held on Sunday.

“We tested here a couple of weeks ago already, and we tried a lot of different things these last two days,” said Corser. “So far, it is difficult to judge whether we went into the right direction. We will know more on Friday.

“The conditions at this last test were close to perfect. It was not too warm for the tyres and it is not too windy today. I am not surprised that Carlos Checa was able to beat the Superbike lap record.”

Amazingly, Corser has competed in 16 of the 20 WSBK rounds at Phillip Island, winning his first race in 1995 -- a year before he won the first of his two world championships.

Since 1995, Corser has gone on to win another six WSBK races at Phillip Island, which makes him the most successful rider at the circuit, just one victory in front of compatriot Troy Bayliss.

The world Superbike grid has gone through a major overhaul in the off-season, with only Aprilia fielding the same factory team in 2011.

The Italian equip has reigning world champion Max Biaggi and Leon Camier in its line-up, while Kawasaki -- the only marque to be introducing an all-new machine this year in the shape of the ZX-10R – has simply added Spaniard Joan Lascorz to join incumbents Chris Vermeulen and Tom Sykes.

However, the Sunshine Coast-bred Vermeulen will sit out Phillip Island as he continues to recover from major knee surgery, and is eyeing a championship return at Donington in late March.

The world Superbike title also welcomes former 250GP world champion and MotoGP winner Marco Melandri into the fold for 2011, where he will campaign a factory Yamaha alongside two-time world Supersport runner-up Eugene Laverty.

Other hard men on the 23-strong grid at Phillip Island will include popular Japanese rider Noriyuki Haga (Aprilia), Italy’s Michel Fabrizio (Suzuki), BMW’s new recruit Leon Haslam, Honda’s Jonathan Rea, reigning world No 3 Carlos Checa (Ducati), Czech rider Jakub Smrz (Ducati) and Frenchman Sylvain Guintoli (Ducati).

In the two-day test at Phillip Island, Checa completed the four-session, 560-minute outing ahead of Guintoli, Rea, Smrz, Lascorz, Biaggi, Fabrizio and Melandri.

Six of the seven brands represented in this year’s championship made it into the top 10, which reflects how competitive the racing is expected to be.

But Rea’s outing ended disastrously when he crashed at the fast turn three and his bike caught on fire. He was later airlifted to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne for further examination, which included an assessment of a pre-existing wrist injury. The battered world No. 4 is expected to ride at Phillip Island, albeit not at full fitness.

Since 1990, Australian riders have won 23 of the 39 WSBK races at Phillip Island (an odd number because of the cancellation of race two in 2001), with Anthony Gobert, Corser, Bayliss and Kevin Magee accounting for most of the success.

In world Supersport this weekend, Newcastle’s Broc Parkes (Kawasaki) will be aiming for the perfect start after completing the two-day test just 0.14 seconds in arrears of former world champion Fabien Foret (Honda).

Parkes’ team-mate David Salom appears to be the only other rider who can spoil a stirring home town victory for Parkes.

Andrew Pitt was the last Australian to win the world Supersport race at Phillip Island, in 2008.

The second Aussie world Supersport rider, Mitchell Pirotta (Honda), was 23rd in the test, with 26 riders set to be on the starting blocks this Sunday.

In addition to the two world championship classes, Phillip Island will also host round one of the Viking Group Australian Superbike Championship featuring Superbike, Prostock, Supersport and Superstock 600 classes, while there will also be standalone events for the popular Historic bikes.

There will be live coverage from Phillip Island on Speed Channel from 2:30-4:00pm Saturday, and 11.30am-5:00pm Sunday.