World Super Bike - Round Five - Donington Park

15th - 17 July 2022

In recent years World Superbikes hasn’t been the most popular of motorsports spectator events,  but after last weekend's round five held at Donington Park it might just have turned a corner. An estimated 50,000 fans turned up to watch the show, and what a show it was! The racing was exceptional, close edge of the seat stuff with different manufacturers and race teams vying for the top spot.

Three WSBK races were held over the weekend with three free practice and one warm up session, so there was plenty of opportunities to see the stars of WSBK.

If you include the Parc fermé and paddock show - a stage setup in the centre of the paddock where there were interviews, auctions of riders' gear for charity and commentary on the races with live streaming of the track action, you were given maximum access to the racers.

As this was the British round of the championship there were a number of wild card riders. I have no idea how they are picked but the reigning British Superbike Champion Taz Mackenzie was an obvious one to get a place.

Having been injured at the start of the season he is playing catch up and is not the best rider (yet) in this year's BSB, but deserved his ride being last year's champion and carrying the British Super Bikes number one plate this year.

It could have been so different if a decent sponsorship deal could have been put together last year, as a spot was waiting for him in WSBK but it just didn’t come together.

Taz was the best of the wild card riders with two mid table finishes and a DNF. Not a bad day at the office when you consider the WSBK are a very different animal to BSB motorcycles.

Different engines and  Magneti Marelli electronics packages are allowed in WSBK but not in BSB, so all of the wild card riders had a steep learning curve.

Peter Hickman on the BMW M 1000RR was struggling with the extra grip given by the electronics, so much so that he turned it off at one point. This didn’t slow him down that much, as he was only slower in only a few corners compared to the other riders but it was enough to drop him to the bottom end of the results, showing how competitive this class is.

His slower overall speed didn’t stop , the reigning WSBK Champion Toprak Razgatlioglu, from following him round in the free practice sessions as he tried to get a bit of local knowledge from a racer who knows this track like the back of his hand.

It looks like Peter Hickman impressed BMW as he has been selected to stand in for the injured Michael van der Mark and ride along side Scott Redding in the BMW MotorradWorldSBK Team at the next WSBK round in the Czech Republic. 

Leon Haslam was the third wild card rider and just behind Taz on the results card. Leon has loads of experience in WSBK having just moved back to BSB after a few seasons at the top level.

There was nothing outstanding from the former BSB Champion, but it was a good solid ride and much needed race day practice for the rest of the racing season.

So let’s take a look at the racing and the reigning champion Toprak Razgatlioglu, sporting the number one plate. Toprak has had a slow start to the season and looked to be struggling coming into round five of the twelve round championship at Donington, but you can never write off this quality racer.

You don’t become a world champion without having inner strength and a determination to win and getting back to winning ways was the order of the day.

Three wins from three races did the job. This is the first time he has done a hat-trick on the Yamaha in WSBK but it was a hard fought battle that the results sheets didn’t show.

His main title contenders are the current front runner Alvaro Bautista riding a Ducati Panigale V4 R, who before the Donington round, had finished every race on the podium. That was not to happen as Bautista crashed out at Goddards, battling with six times champion Jonathan Rea in race one.

He damaged his right hand in the crash but was cleared to ride, strapping it up and using pain killers. On Sunday he faired a little better with a fourth, and got back on the podium in the last race but with a reduced lead in the championship but still holding onto first place. 

Jonathan Rea who is second in the championship set the pace for the weekend during Saturday's super pole, going under the lap record and taking pole position on the grid for the first race.

Now sitting in second in the championship, the most successful WSBK rider of all time, he has re-signed with his Kawasaki WorldSBK Racing Tea  for the next two years, and why wouldn’t they sign him up? Fastest in super pole following up with two seconds and a third, he is a confirmed winner with the potential to add to his championship haul.

Alex Lowes is the team mate of Jonathan Rea in the Kawasaki WorldSBK team who also signed a multi year deal last year. He was second in the super pole and was also on the podium in third place in race one. He didn’t fair as well in the next two races, with a fifth and sixth.

One rider we haven’t mentioned so far is Scott Reading. He was the only other racer to get on the podium over the weekend, a third in the super pole.

This is Scott's first podium of the year and was well received by his legions of fans who had turned out in force to watch him race. With some new parts for his BMW M 1000RR, there were high hopes of a top three result, and he delivered. 

I have always enjoyed watching Scott race but his year was a treat, watching at the Melbourne Loop a tight 180 degree right hander was amazing.

He can take a bike from fully laid over to upright in the blink of an eye. He is such a showman that on one of the cool down laps he was trying to touch his helmet on the track.

I know I should have taken a photo, but I was just enjoying the spectacle with the rest of the fans.

It wasn't just WSBK out on track the World Super Sport, Yamaha R3 Cup, FIM Sidecars, National Ducati V2 Cup and our domestic British Junior Super Sport were all featured.

In the World Super Sport the Swiss rider #77 Dominique Aegerter dominated taking the win in the superpole and both races. #7 Lorenzo Baldassarri took second place in both races with third went to #3 De Rose in race 1 and #11 Bulega in race two.

In the Yamaha R3 Cup #13 Devis Bergamini riding the Soradis Yamaha MotoXracing dominated wining both races. He started second on the grid behind #37 Andrea Pizzoli who set the pace in the Super pole. 

#51 Blaze Baker riding the Track Demons Racing Powered by HMY at his first Tri-Options Cup race won both National Ducati V2 Cup races. David Shoubridge on the Rich Energy Ducati and the championship leader crashed out to record a double DNF after starting the season with four wins.

The True Heroes Team who we are following this year had three riders out in the National Ducati V2 Cup, #15 Leon Wilton, #44 Charlie White and 89 Chris Ganley.

Chris Ganley put in a storming performance to become the first single arm amputee to qualify to race at a National Level. All of the riders did personal bests and got some valuable track time before the all important next round at this weekend's Brands Hatch BSB meeting.

Photographic Post Script

To close off this report we will look at Donington Park from the view point of the spectator photographer. Most of Donington's 2.487 mile Grand Prix circuit is quite a distance from the spectator, so if you are taking pictures a super zoom lens up to 500mm is required, which is standard for the UK tracks like Silverstone that hold world class events. Large run off areas and high fences dominate the landscape making it tricky to get a good shot.

The fences can be defeated by getting as close as possible and using a long lens with a wide aperture, making the fence all but disappear. However, the weather has a significant influence on motorsports photography. The very hot and at times very bright sunshine last weekend were not conducive to getting good pictures.

The sun shines off the safety fencing inducing glare and deep shadows on the subjects, resulting in harsh images. These can be rectified in post processing, but one aspect of the hot weather will defeat event the best photographer, heat haze.

We all suffered from this over the weekend. Very hot weather and miles of tarmac heat up, making the air rise. It was easy to spot, and shimmering, rippling air coming off the track will affect the auto focus of the camera system and reduce the overall image sharpness.

There are a few ways to negate heat haze. The obvious one is to shoot long distance images early in the morning when it's cooler, and get closer to your subject when it heats up in the afternoon - the effects are reduced with distance. You can also pre-focus on the track and turn the auto focus off. This was how we used to work back in the day before fancy auto focus, so give it a try but it won't improve the image resolution, so stop down as much as you can.

The last way is to get higher. Heat haze is more intense closer to the ground, so if you are shooting at eye level to the subject it will be affected more. Shoot from grandstands and raised banking. Or alternatively stow the camera gear, grab a cool one and enjoy the racing.

Thanks to RPW Photography, David Harbey, Keith Adcock and Oilthephoto for helping out with images for this report.