Criticism from Bimota: The World Superbike Championship’s balance system isn’t working

This is the fundamental principle behind the Superbike World Championship: as manufacturers adopt different concepts and approaches when developing their sports motorbikes, performance is to be balanced through regulatory intervention. From 2025, the regulations will introduce a fuel flow limit to curb the dominance of the most successful manufacturers.

However, so far, all 21 races in this year’s championship have been won by Ducati’s star rider Nicolò Bulega, and only seven podium finishes have been secured by non-Ducati riders: BMW ace Miguel Oliveira finished third four times, Bimota rider Axel Bassani secured two second places, and his team-mate Alex Lowes finished third on the podium in one race.

The fact that the only places up for grabs are behind Ducati is a growing problem for the Superbike World Championship and is also causing frustration amongst the rival teams.

“It’s a difficult situation. Put yourself in the shoes of a rider who starts a race knowing he can’t win. Or in those of an engineer, a mechanic, or anyone else: we arrive at the pits in the morning and already know we won’t be winning,” explains Pere Riba, Alex Lowes’s crew chief, speaking to Corsedimoto. “I don’t want to be misunderstood, and I don’t want to stir up controversy. I’m simply pointing out two things: Ducati has done an incredible job, and the regulatory balancing system isn’t working.”

Ducati’s fuel flow in the 2026 Superbike World Championship has already been reduced to the lowest possible level. However, the V4R’s engine and electronics work so perfectly that its dominance remains unchanged.

“You can look at this from two angles. You could say: ‘Hats off – you’ve done a fantastic job, you’re the best’,” said the former racing driver. “The other perspective is that the Superbike series is based on the concept of performance equalisation. I mean equalisation in the general sense – both technical and non-technical. The key concept is balance. They’ve introduced the fuel flow restriction, but it’s pointless – everyone can see that. So the situation is that this kind of equalisation isn’t working. The result is effectively zero. All we can do now is fight to finish behind the Ducatis.”

Is rev limiting the better balancing system?

At the moment, we’re seeing more exciting races in the Supersport and World Sportbike Championships than in the top category, even though a wide variety of motorbikes compete there too. Riba argues that the World Superbike Championship’s balance system should be put to the test.

“The rev limiter wasn’t a perfect system, but it provided better balance than limiting fuel flow,” the Spaniard noted, referring to previous seasons. “I don’t want to get bogged down in technical details, but I see that the SportBike class has been introduced this year; I see 400cc motorbikes competing against 800cc machines – different engine configurations, completely different designs and bike characteristics. And yet the races are fantastic. The same goes for the Supersport class – it’s spectacular. But not the Superbike class. I don’t want to blame anyone; I’m just saying that the Superbike Championship isn’t an exciting championship at the moment.”