WSBK preview: Jerez, Spain, September 18-20

Kawasaki's Jonathan Rea is just 6pts away from winning the 2015 Superbike World Championship, with round 11 (of 13) to be held at Jerez in Spain form September 18-20.

Thanks to a truly dominant campaign on the ZX-10R, number 65 requires only a single top 10 finish in the opening race at Jerez — which will happen unless he has mechanical problems or he is the victim of sketchy conditions.

Rea's season has been superlative: 20 races, 20 podium finishes and 12 race wins. He has already become the first rider in history to have clinched 20 top-three finishes in as many races from the start of a season and, should the rostrum run continue, he will beat Colin Edwards’ record of consecutive podium finishes in the first Qatar race.

Rea will become the 17th different WSBK champion and the fifth different title winner in as many years. Carl Fogarty, Neil Hodgson, James Toseland and Tom Sykes may have gone before him as British world champions, but all of them hailed from England; thus, Rea would be the first Northern Irish title winner.

Four-time 2015 race winner Chaz Davies is the only man who can prevent Rea from winning the title. Despite the Aruba.it Racing-Ducati SBK Team rider having finished on the podium in eight of the last 10 races, collecting fourth place finishes in the other two, he continues to feel the effects of his costly low placings in Thailand and his double retirement of Imola. A colossal deficit of 144pts to Rea (with 150 on offer from the final three rounds in Spain, France and Qatar) means the only way Davies can prevent Rea from winning the title is by winning five of the remaining six races and finishing at least second in the other — and all the while hoping Rea fails to score each time. In fact, in the Sunday Paddock Show at Laguna Seca in July, Davies was already hailing Rea as the 2015 world champion. This weekend Welshman Davies is partnered by Michele Pirro, who covers for the injured Davide Giugliano.

The fight for runner-up spot is far less clear-cut. Rea's teammate Tom Sykes has finished in the top two of the world championship for the last three years (including his title, which he won at Jerez in 2013) and he wants to make it four. Sykes currently sits 13pts behind second-placed Davies, while Aprilia Racing Team – Red Devils’ Leon Haslam may have suffered of late but remains in the fight for second, 36pts behind Sykes and 49 in arrears of target man Davies.

Further back, Aprilia’s Jordi Torres will feel more confident of retaining a top five spot now that Giugliano is out of action, but must be wary of a potential late-season charge from soon-to-be outgoing world champion Sylvain Guintoli (Pata Honda World Superbike Team).

What of this weekend’s venue? This is the third consecutive year that Jerez de la Frontera is a permanent fixture on the modern-day calendar. However, this is the fourth time that WSBK visits the sun-baked southern Spanish destination, which debuted on the calendar in 1990; Frenchman Raymond Roche celebrated both of the race wins prior to clinching the title that season.

Three Spanish riders line up on the grid this weekend: Torres from Rubí, Catalunya, David Salom from Palma de Mallorca (Team Pedercini) and Roman Ramos from Santa María de Cayón in northern Cantabria (Team Go Eleven). This quantity of representatives matches the number of Spanish riders to have won WSBK races: Carlos Checa (24 race wins), Ruben Xaus (11) and Fonsi Nieto (1). How sweet would it be to make it four at home this weekend?

Australia's Alex Phillis will compete on a Grillini Kawasaki at Jerez after first joining the team at Sepang, and he'll be looking to impress as the jockeying for full-time positions in 2016 continues.

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In world supersport, it's crunch time. The contenders involved couldn’t be much more diverse, representing three marques in Kawasaki, MV Agusta and Honda: Kenan Sofuoglu of Turkey (Kawasaki Puccetti Racing), Jules Cluzel of France (MV Agusta Reparto Corse) and PJ Jacobsen of the USA (CORE’’ Motorsport Thailand).

Sofuoglu’s lead is 13pts over Cluzel and 28 over Jacobsen, with a maximum of 75 on offer from the last trio of encounters. It should also be noted that Lorenzo Zanetti (Cluzel’s MV team-mate) could still claim the title as the fourth and final rider still in with a shot, although the Italian sits 27pts in arrears of Jacobsen and a significant 55 behind the championship leader.