World Superbikes - Donington Park 2023

13 July 2023

When the PistonClick team pick a motorsports event to review we have a number of criteria which must fit our requirements. If it fits our needs we will go and check it out and report back, so that you as a paying spectator can decide if it’s an event you would like to photograph.

The basis on what constitutes an event that is worthy of our review are many and varied, such as access to the subject, is it an interesting subject and is it value for money? If you are a regular visitor to the site you will see a lot of club racing reviews. These are generally good value for your money and are great to practice your photography before heading out to a headline event.

Headline events for the team are generally much more expensive - Goodwood, Le Mans, MotoGP the IoM TT are must-do for any petrolhead and have vehicles that you don’t get to see every weekend, being annual events.

One event the motorcycle side of the house do like to attend and is not going to break the bank is the World Superbikes. A pre booked ticket for the three days of world class motorsports comes in at £65, a little over £20 a day. Yes it has gone up from last year but what hasn’t risen in cost this last year? We still think it worth the cost.

It seemed a lot of people agreed with us as this year as an estimated 50000 British and Irish fans turned up to watch round 6. The 13 rounds of the World Superbikes is truly a global race series, running from Argentina to Australia and the first weekend of July is traditionally the turn of the UK, specifically Donington Park, to host the circus that is the WSBK. 

I don’t mean WSBK is a show full of clowns, far from it! The paddock looks like a futuristic circus with all of the team buildings, hospitality lounges, merchandise stalls and bars. When you mix in the live stage hosting games, quizzes, music and rider interviews, and the excellent victory road which is a posh Parc Fermé, you will probably now get why it looks like a circus to me.

The WSBK circus is very good at what it does. It travels with a few other world championship race series, Superbikes, Supersport and the Yamaha R3 bLU cRU were at Donington, but will have other series supporting the headline event depending on the country visited.

In the Yamaha R3 bLU cRU there was a rider that the PistonClick team have been following for the last few years, Katie Hind. She was racing as a wild card rider to gain experience and skills that will transpose to the British Junior Supersport which she was also racing in. It was a busy weekend for Katie.

Before we go any further what is World Superbikes or WSBK if you prefer?

WSBK are modified production motorcycles that look the same as the bikes you can see on sale in the motorcycle showrooms across the world. This is the main difference between WSBK and MotoGP, where the bikes are not mass produced being purposely built for Grand Prix racing. WSBK still works on the idea of “Win on Sunday sell on Monday”.

So we had three world championships, the rest of the race programme is then supplemented by the country that is hosting it with a few domestic race series. For the UK this was the ABK Beer 0% BMW Motorrad F 900 R Cup and the five HEL Performance British Junior Supersport Championship, both of which are support races in the British Superbikes Championships. 

It was the WSBK that we had come to see, and with two full length races, a sprint race practice and qualifying there was plenty of opportunity to capture the stars of the WSBK.

There are a quite a few British riders at the top level, most notable are six times WSBK Champion #65 Jonathan Rea, #22 Alex Lowes, British Superbike Champions #45 Scott Redding and #28 Bradley Ray. Ray didn’t have a great start to the weekend, parking his bike in an unconventional manner at Redgate.

Another rider in the wars was #66 Tom Sykes who won the WSBK championship back in 2013. He also had an eventful weekend, high siding and crashing out in race two in a three rider incident. Sykes sustained 10 broken ribs and will be replaced at this weekends WSBK round at Imola by Leon Haslam who is currently racing in the British Superbikes Championship.

So who should you look out for if you are considering going to next year’s event? The current champion and series leader is Alvaro Bautista riding a Ducati Prinigale V4R for the Aruba.it Racing-Ducati team.

Bautista seems unstoppable this year on the Ducati winning every race he has finished, so I was expecting him to be standing on the top spot all weekend. Race one confirmed my statement, winning by nearly four seconds from Toprak Razgatlioglu and posting a new lap record of 1'26.550 in the process.

It was on the cards that the lap records were going to tumble as the track surface at Donington was relaid over the winter and all riders that have ridden it this year have commented on how grippy the new surface is.

Bautista confirmed this by setting a new lap record again in the Sprint Race of 1'25.896, but amazingly former champion Toprak Razgatlioglu pipped him at the post by 0.315 to record his second WSBK win of the year.

In race two (three) it was all back to normal with Bautista again taking the chequered flag in first place, with Razgatlioglu in second.

Alvaro Bautista is one of the three main riders to watch in WSBK, with the others as we have mentioned, Toprak Razgatlioglu the 2021 champion, and six times champion from Northern Ireland Johnathan Rea.

Rea’s six year dominance has slipped somewhat in the last few years but there is no denying he is a quality racer, posting two third places, one in race one and the sprint race and a fifth place in race two. He also took the pole position for race one but could do nothing to stop the Bologna teams who are dominant this year. 

Next up is Toprak Razgatlioglu riding a Yamaha which is not as fast as this year’s Ducati but looks more nimble to me.

In the short 10 lap Sprint (superpole)race Toprak was able to keep Bautista (second) and Rea (third) at bay and claim only his second victory of the year. In the longer 23 lap races there was not much he could do. On the final race I headed to the Foggy Esses as Toprak is renowned for his massive controlled stoppies.

I had an idea where he would do his thing and I was spot on with my location choice. My shooting buddy was on the spectator hill overlooking the Esses just in case I got it wrong - a nice comparison of two different shooting locations I must say. When you visit the track to take photographs, have a plan.

The other main World Championship running alongside the WSBK is the SuperSport.

Nicolo Bulega riding a Ducati for the Aruba.it Racing WorldSSP Team is the championship leader, winning both races. From my viewpoint trackside he is one to watch, with constant lines, fast and smooth it looked too easy for him at Donington.

Pole position, two fastest laps and a lap record resulting in two victories, it doesn’t get better than that.

In the WorldSSP there are a load of British and Irish riders to watch out for.

Taz MacKenzie the 2021 BSB champion is having a torrid time of it in WorldSSP on the Petronas MIE MS Racing Honda Team.

Parting from the factory Yamaha team in BSB to ride a not too competitive Honda was a strange decision. Maybe Honda have a long term plan as Taz is too good to be languishing at the back of the grid.

John McPhee #17 raced in Moto3 from 2012 to 2022, recording 16 podiums. The Scot with his distinctive Scottish flagged helmet is also having a hard time of it in WorldSSP, coming in 18th and 20th in the two races.

Two Irish riders, #91 Jack Kennedy and #34 Rhys Irwin, had wild cards for the Donington round. 

One rider that is doing well is Tom Booth-Amos who took a 6th place in front of his home crowd. TBA is competing in the World and British SuperSport Championship where, after the Snetterton round, he is placed second in the British SuperSport Championship. 

There are usually a few wild card rides for the host nation in the different classes, and it’s interesting to see how our domestic riders compare to the best in the world. From the Donington round it looks like we have some work to do to.

The most work that had to be done over the weekend was to wild card rider Eugene McManus’s bike. His Triumph Street Triple RS 765 went down at the Foggy Esses and turned into a fire ball, resulting in his pit crew pulling an all nighter to get him ready for the following day’s race.

He managed 10 laps before a fall - an expensive weekend. The Marshals did a great job containing the fire. Matty, the first Marshal on the scene, had this to say about putting his first motorsport fire out.

“It is a totally different ball game extinguishing a tray of petrol on a controlled environment to dealing with a bike on fire with a split tank. The temperature was about 600° and trying not to breathe in the powder in the blustery conditions was challenging”. 

Fires at the track are not common these days, but it’s reassuring that the safety team are well trained and motivated to get stuck in. Eugene and all of the Marshals were fine after the incident and now have some spectacular FaceBook cover photos to remember when the WSBK circus visited Donington Park! 

Photographic Post Script

There were just two of us at Donington to cover this event shooting from the spectator areas. Both of us used the Nikon D500 with a Nikon 200-400mm f/4 VR VII with 1.4 teleconverters, and if you know your photographic kit, the AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR.

The 18-140mm is super light weight and was mainly packaged with camera bodies so was classed as a kit lens. A lot of people dismissed this very versatile lens and sold it on to get something “better” so you can pick them up for little money these days. We both rate this lens. Nikon did a great job as it’s razor sharp and a great paddock walk round lens, especially when space is at a premium and you need to get that shot quickly.   

Thanks to RPW Photography for helping out with this report.