Rennie Scaysbrook | February 10, 2021
Cycle News Lowside
COLUMN
The Future of Supersport
The Supersport class is dead. At least, that’s what you’ll hear from some of the motorcycle manufacturers who have propped up the class since the beginning of the 1980s.
As ominous as that sounds, it’s not entirely true. The Supersport class is not so much dead as it is in the beginnings of a cultural shift perpetuated by a few manufacturers who have traditionally been on the class’s fringes.
Triumph is indeed one of those. Along with Ducati, Triumph is heading the new wave of machines that will make up the future of the Supersport class, as it changes from traditional inline four-cylinder motorcycles to, well, no one really knows.
The 2021 British Supersport Championship will allow the Triumph Daytona Moto2 765 Limited Edition and the Ducati Panigale V2 in its ranks to compete alongside the aging 600s, and there’s potentially room for the MV Agusta F3 800, or even the KTM 890 Duke R—if you want to go all naked bike on the argument.
MotoAmerica must take notice of this.
This is a good thing because for motorcycle racing to survive, it needs a healthy Supersport class that has the backing of the major manufacturers. And if you look at the Supersport class, it has not changed since the 1980s, aside from allowing 675cc triples to compete against the 600cc fours and 750cc twins when Triumph’s first 675 Daytona appeared in the early 2000s. Superbikes have changed dramatically in this timeframe, and indeed took the 1000cc fours and 1200cc twins route nearly 20 years ago thanks to the manufacturers ceasing production of 750cc fours. It’s time for the Supersport class to change.
The best news in the change is that the manufacturers have not given up on selling sportbikes. Yamaha has enjoyed a roaring sales success with the diminutive YZF-R3, likewise Kawasaki with the Ninja 400, while KTM has sadly dropped right off the boil with the excellent little RC390.
If we check the next level on the capacity ladder, the Aprilia RS 660 looks set to rewrite the rule book for the Twins Cup. This is the first purpose-built sportbike for the Twins class, not a naked bike requiring vast amounts of fabrication work to make race legal. Again, Yamaha and Suzuki are the stalwarts here, but racing an SV650 that was designed two decades ago and costs upwards of $25,000 to build and run at national level makes absolutely zero financial sense unless you’re trying to be the next Rocco Landers.
Aprilia looks like it’s forcing the hands of at least Yamaha, who are rumored to be working on a proper sportbike version of the MT-07 that so many have used to take up Twins racing across the country—a good sign indeed from one of the top four Japanese brands and show of confidence in the class’s future.
With life at least appearing to be in okay shape in the smaller classes, that just leaves the gaping hole of the Supersport class to fill. At club level, some organizations have already got rules in place that allow for triples up to 800cc and twins up to 900cc to race against the fours, but this is not the case at national level.
In an incredible twist of irony, the much-maligned AMA Daytona Sportbike category of a decade ago was actually on the right path with their rule set when they allowed the Ducati 848 to go against the 600s of the day.
Had these rules been kept in place, they would have indeed further separated American racing from what was happening in the rest of the world (something the MotoAmerica owners desperately wanted to avoid), but they would have put us way ahead of the curve in regard to the supersport class and its rather international future.
The thing about production racing is that there needs to be manufacturers producing the bikes for people to buy. If these bikes are not being produced (no Honda CBR600RR, no Yamaha YZF-R6, with just the 12-year-old Suzuki GSX-R600 and nine-year-old Kawasaki ZX-636R being sold in America), something clearly needs to be done. Heck, the Kawasaki is already 36cc bigger than the GSX-R600 or the R6, so MotoAmerica already has its toe in the water with regards to bigger 600s.
MotoAmerica follows the FIM’s rulebook—that’s why we have insanely expensive superbikes for the good of getting the next American onto the world stage—but Britain produces way more international riders than America does, and they could care less what the FIM says in its rulebook for what machines race in what class. We don’t even have a WorldSBK round here anymore to do wildcards in (and when we did, there was no Supersport class present), so why bother adhering to what the FIM says should and shouldn’t be allowed to race?
MotoAmerica has the chance to become a leader in the new Supersport segment. People still want to race, but they need manufacturers building the bikes and pushing the segment along. The best riders will shine—the cream always rises to the top—and if they have the talent, financial backing and most importantly, desire, they will back themselves and go to Europe just like Joe Roberts and Garrett Gerloff did.
The superbike class looks like it’ll stay the way it is for now. That’s fine, but let’s tweak the supersport class to reflect what’s happening in the industry right now, not what happened a decade or more ago.
Or we could all just go and race baggers.CN