WorldSBK, WorldSSP and WorldSSP300 season previews, entry lists, calendar

WorldSBK, WorldSSP and WorldSSP300 Entry Lists

In World Superbike we will start the season in Spain with a new champion, Toprak Razgatlioglu. The Turk put in an impressive display of aggressive riding in 2021 to wrestle the crown from Jonathan Rea and this pair will come out swinging once again right from the off on April 8th when the season gets underway at Aragon. Razgatliogli remains at Pata Yamaha with Brixx WorldSBK alongside Andrea Locatelli.

Razgatlioglu running with #1 in 2022 means Jonathan Rea has switched back to #65 for the 2022 season at Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK as he looks to reclaim the title and chases a seventh crown. Once again, Rea will be joined by Alex Lowes who will be hoping to bounce back from an injury-hit 2021 season.

Scott Redding has jumped ship from Ducati to BMW, the Brit joins the team alongside Michael van der Mark. It means the team will be on their third different line-up in as many years to compete on the BMW M 1000 RR.

Alvaro Bautista has left Honda and is back on the Ducati V4 R he was previously so successful on and will be alongside Michael Ruben Rinaldi, who will embark on his second campaign with the factory Ducati squad, hoping to add to his three wins from 2022.

At Honda we have two young exiles from the ranks of MotoGP and Moto2 with Iker Lecuona on the new Fireblade alongside fellow Spaniard Xavi Vierge. Will they be able to do something on the Honda that neither Bautista or Haslam could manage…?

BMW have also expanded the number of BMW machines on the grid to four with the Bonovo Action BMW squad, with Eugene Laverty being joined by the returning Loris Baz. Like at BMW, there has been an expansion of the satellite team as MIE Racing Honda Team, with Leandro ‘Tati’ Mercado returning for a second season at the team and Hafizh Syahrin joining the squad.

There will be a new team on the 2022 grid as Yamaha Motoxracing WorldSBK Team join the Championship having previously competed in WorldSSP and WorldSSP300. They will run Spanish rider Isaac Viñales in 2022, after he made the switch from Orelac Racing VerdNatura; his place will be taken by Czech rider Oliver König. As well as teams, two riders have made the switch from WorldSSP to WorldSBK. Philipp Oettl joins Team GoEleven for 2022 while Luca Bernardi will become the first rider to compete in WorldSSP300, WorldSSP and WorldSBK when he takes to the grid with Barni Spark Racing Team.

GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team have retained the same line-up for 2022 with Garrett Gerloff returning for his third campaign alongside Kohta Nozane, who enters his sophomore campaign. After an incredible rookie campaign in 2021, Axel Bassani returns with Motocorsa Racing as he looks to build on his single podium finish while Lucas Mahias returns for a second season with Kawasaki Puccetti Racing, while there is one seat still to be announced at TPR Team Pedercini Racing, with the Italian team going down to one bike in 2022.

14 nationalities have been confirmed for 2022, up from 12 on the entry list in 2021. San Marino will be represented for the first time since Alex De Angelis in 2017 when Bernardi takes his spot on the grid. For Malaysia, Syahrin will be the country’s first full-time representative on the grid and the first since Cletus Adi Haslam at Johor in 1993. The 23 riders on the grid will compete for five manufacturers: four will ride BMW bikes and another four on Honda machinery. Yamaha are the manufacturer with the most bikes on the grid in 2022, with six YZF R1 machines while there will be five Ducati Panigale V4 R bikes and five Kawasaki ZX-10RRs.

WorldSBK Entry List

WorldSSP Entry List

There may be no Aussie in the premier category of the road bike based series but there are two that will line-up in World Supersport.

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Ben Currie has spent the majority of his racing career within the ranks of British Supersport, where he finished runner-up in 2021, but turns his hand to the World Championship for the first time in 2022.

In the biggest shake-up in the history of the category, organisers will open the class up to 955 cc V-Twins and 765 triples in a quest to broaden the appeal of the category and open it up to more manufacturers.  And it is on one of those twins that Oli Bayliss will make his first foray into Europe aboard.

Ducati have six teams and seven riders in their camp. Nicolo Bulega was the first to join as the Aruba.it Racing – Ducati squad move into WorldSSP, whilst the Barni Racing Team also join the class with aforementioned rookie Oli Bayliss. There’s a host more, including the return of Althea Racing as Genesio Bevilacqua’s team is back with Federico Caricasulo, whilst Davide Guigliano returns as a team manager for the D34G Racing Team with Filippo Fuligni and Federico Fuligni; CM Racing switch to Ducati with Maximillian Kofler, as do the Orelac Racing VerdNatura team with Raffaele De Rosa.

Then, there’s the return of Triumph with the famous PTR squad, run by Simon Buckmaster. Estonian Hannes Soomer will race the Triumph Street Triple 765 and will have ex-Moto2 star Stefano Manzi alongside him. Manzi raced at Jerez in 2021 in WorldSSP and achieved a ninth place, so could achieve great things with a full season and a complete testing programme. Buckmaster’s team have already had experience with the bikes too, as they ran Kyle Smith and American Brandon Paasch in the British Supersport series.

Other motorcycles that have been newly homologated for the category are the MV Agusta F3 800 and the MV Agusta F3 Superveloce and the Suzuki GSX-R750.  Officials will work on parity throughout the season with all the New Generation machines having their engines torque mapped and running a strictly controlled ECU.  While there are no Suzuki entrants as yet, the machine is eligible if fitted with an officially designated set of ride-by-wire throttle bodies that can be controlled by the new standardised Mectronik ECU.

Parity will take into account aspects such as lap time in comparison to other competitors, speed traps, race results and more. This can be changed every three rounds if needed, to equalise performance further and the balance will be weighted to the data collected during the previous six events. The method of balancing will be raise or reduce the power potential of the machine’s engine, with the FIM and the DWO reserving the right to update the balance at their discretion in the case of imbalance.

The initial balance is being calculated after intensive dyno tests with many DWO partners involved. To keep things equal, the tests are all taking place using the Panta control fuel and Motul 300v lubricant. Tests are taking place at RE engineering all overseen by the FIM and Mectronik. Balancing factors may be updated at the end of each season.

he 2022 season in WorldSSP sees new engine regulations come into force. For WorldSSP Next Generation machines, no modifications may be made unless they are stated in the text or in the Eligible Parts for Competition List. With regards to allocation, that will now be calculated by the number of events and rounded to the nearest whole number: 400cc – 600cc machines will have one engine for every 2.5 rounds, 601cc – 799cc with have one engine every three rounds, whilst 800cc and over may have one engine for every 3.5 rounds. Engines may be chosen and impounded for Dyno testing (during events, between events or after the season) at an approved balancing facility and for comparison to the reference engine. Apart from FIM and DWO staff, only one team representative may attend the test.

For 2022, a combined weight limit will be used in WorldSSP, with the minimum bike-rider combined weight being 242kg. In the same way that World Supersport 300 works, there will be a soft maximum weight and a hard minimum weight for the bikes. Should the soft maximum weight be achieved or exceeded, then the combined minimum weight doesn’t need to be reached. The motorcycle on its own must never be below the hard minimum weight; there is no tolerance on this and after the race, the bike and rider will be weighed in racing condition, and nothing may be added.

There’ll be an extra element on tyre usage this year as World Supersport teams will have less to use; in 2021, teams had 17 tyres to use across the weekend. In 2022, they will have 15: seven fronts and eight rears, one less at each end compared to 2021. Pirelli will supply a minimum of two compounds for both the front and rear tyres, with a minimum allocation of six of each compound.

WorldSSP300 Entry List

Harry Khouri is the only Aussie on the World Supersport 300 entry list thus far, check out this recent profile/interview we published with the youngster here.

With both Jeffrey Buis and Adrian Huertas moving up to WorldSSP, MTM Kawasaki have brought in Dutch riders Victor Steeman and Ruben Bijman for 2022 alongside race winner Yuta Okaya, who remains with the team. After running a four-rider line-up in recent years, the team have gone to three bikes for 2022.

The Füsport – RT Motorsports by SKM – Kawasaki have also reduced the number of bikes they will compete with in 2022, from three to two. With Tom Booth-Amos also moving up to WorldSSP, the team will run Dirk Geiger and Troy Alberto in 2022; Alberto becoming the first rider from the Philippines to compete in WorldSSP300.

There is also a change at AD78 Team Brasil by MS Racing in their line-up. While Ton Kawakami returns for another WorldSSP300 campaign with the team, he will be joined by Humberto Maier for this season. The team continues to run an all-Brazilian line-up with their new signing. AD78 Team Brasil by MS Racing will run with the Yamaha YZF-R3 bike in 2022 as they have in previous campaigns, where they finished as the highest Yamaha team in the standings.

Leader Team Flembbo have decided to run an all-French line-up in 2022, keeping Samuel Di Sora for another season with the team after his victory in Race 1 at Portimao. He will be joined by compatriot Sylvain Markarian for the upcoming season. SMW Racing will field rookie Davide Conte in the upcoming campaign alongside the experienced Iñigo Iglesias, with Iglesias hoping to add to his podium tally in 2022.

Both Bruno Ieraci and Hugo De Cancellis return to the Championship, racing for the Prodina Racing WorldSSP300 outfit in 2022 as both look to make their mark on the Championship on Kawasaki machinery. As in 2021, there will only be one full-time KTM representative on the grid with Lehmann Lennox joining Freudenberg KTM – Paligo Racing after a one-off appearance with KTM machinery in 2021 in Barcelona.

In 2022, three riders who competed in the inaugural Yamaha R3 bLU cRU European Cup will take to the WorldSSP300 grid. Iker Garcia was crowned the first ever Cup winner in 2021 and will race with Yamaha MS Racing in 2022, alongside 2017 WorldSSP300 Champion Marc Garcia. Fenton Seabright will be with the Viñales Racing Team for 2022 after claiming third place in the Yamaha R3 European Cup 2021 campaign. The Briton is joined by Italian rider Marco Gaggi for the upcoming campaign. Greece will be represented for the first time in WorldSSP300 when Ioannis Peristeras links up with the ProGP Racing squad, alongside Gabriele Mastroluca, with Peristeras finishing eighth in the 2021 Yamaha R3 European Cup standings.

Kawasaki have won all but the 2017 Manufacturers’ Championship in 2017, with 17 of the 30 bikes on the 22 grid the Kawasaki Ninja 400. Both Alessandro Zanca and Kevin Sabatucci return to the Championship, this time with Kawasaki GP Project. Accolade Smrz Racing will compete with Spanish duo Yeray Saiz and Jose Luis Perez in 2022, running an all-Spanish line-up for the second consecutive campaign. Team #109 Kawasaki expand to two bikes for 2022, retaining the services of Daniel Mogeda who finished the 2021 season with the team and bringing in Harry Khouri.

There will be plenty of Yamaha machines on the grid in 2022, making up 12 of the 30-strong grid for the upcoming season. Team BrCorse will run a two-bike effort in 2022 having recruited British rider Indy Offer for his third campaign in WorldSSP300 to race alongside Mirko Gennai.

Two one-rider squads are running Yamaha machinery in 2022 to round out the entry list. After impressing during one-off outings in 2021, Alvaro Diaz lines up for a full-time campaign with the Arco Motor University Team, as well as Matteo Vannucci for the AG Motorsport Italia Yamaha squad; Vannucci did compete in the Yamaha R3 European Cup in 2021, claiming pole and a podium on his sole outing at Misano.

WorldSBK 2022 Calendar