Record world champion Jonathan Rea 2023 after his last victory to date in Most – a picture from better times for the Northern Irishman, who is currently going through what is probably the most difficult phase of his 16-year WorldSBK career. The prospects of repeating his triumph in the first race in the Czech Republic last year seem to be a long way off and just a podium would be like a victory for him.

WorldSBK starting position after round 5 at Donington Park

After Ducati had been favored by the FIM for over five years from 2019 with a significantly higher permitted maximum speed than its competitors, the last two in particular were characterized by a one-sidedness never seen before. Racing dwarf Alvaro Bautista had had an immense advantage before the long overdue regulation with a minimum weight for rider and machine, which was finally introduced in 2024. Never before in the history of the Superbike World Championship had a rider, often without even having to push himself to the absolute limit, prevailed with such ease and won almost at will, especially in 2023. Although the Spaniard only has to pack half of his weight advantage of around 7 to 8 kilograms onto his Ducati Panigale V4R, he seems to have his problems with it. However, the current picture is very misleading when it comes to the supposed balance in the field. Without the exceptional talent Toprak Razgatlioglu on the ever-improving BMW M-1000RR, Bautista and his new Aruba..it Ducati factory teammate would still be largely untouchable for the rest of the competition. But fortunately for the real fans of two-wheel racing, the Turk’s top form is making the World Championship really exciting again for the first time since 2021.

Toprak Razgatlioglu photographed by us in an interview in 2019 after finishing third in the first race in Imola. The Turk was 19.291 seconds behind winner Jonathan Rea (both Kawasaki), who celebrated his first triumph after 11 second places behind Alvaro Bautista (Ducati). After the winner’s interview, the Northern Irishman presented us with his helmet visor, which has of course been given a place of honor with us ever since.

The Czech round before the halfway point of the season

One of the special features of the Autodrom Most is the fact that, unlike is often the case, Ducati with its factory riders does not lead the statistics of recent years. Thanks to Toprak Razgatlioglu, Yamaha has been at the top in this regard since the introduction of this course in the WSBK calendar, although 3 of his 5 victories on this track were only achieved in the Tissot sprint race and thus with half the points. Not only the Turk, but also Jonathan Rea has good memories of Most, although he also had an annoying crash here at the premiere in the first ever WorldSBK race on the Autodrom. But Toprak also had a crash at the last race in the Czech Republic when he landed in the gravel bed at turn 3 with six laps to go. The same thing happened to Alex Lowes in the Tissot sprint race in 2022, who even had to miss the last race due to injury. The most winding track on the calendar is the sixth round, which marks the end of the first half of the season, before the race continues in Portimão in August. This is followed by the next forced break due to poor planning by the FIM and Dorna, with the Balaton Park Circuit, which was unsurprisingly cancelled, before the race resumes in September near Nevers on the Magny Cours circuit.

Racetrack map of Brüx, as the city in the Czech Republic was also called in earlier times. With a total of 21 corners and a highly varied series of bends. At turn ten is the so-called long lap for the controversial penalties, which were only introduced in 2019 and with which the FIM did not make any new friends anywhere, specially in the Paddock. The longest straight is at the start-finish line and measures 792 meters.
“King” Carl Fogarty – the second best WorldSBK rider in history after Jonathan Rea was the first winner in 1993 in the Czech Republic. His battles with the competition were partly responsible for the fact that even the Motorcycle World Championship (now MotoGP) was jealous of the number of spectators at the Superbike World Championship. More about his successes and the earlier decades in very detailed and richly illustrated form on this page under History.

Long WSBK racing tradition in the Czech Republic

From 1993 onwards, several WorldSBK rounds were held in Brno at irregular intervals until, as was the case in MotoGP, the track was dropped from the FIM calendar due to a lack of urgently needed renovations. Where the fat profits went for years remained dubious. In any case, the entire region and many hotels benefited from the World Championship races for a very long time and the prices for overnight stays, especially in MotoGP, kept breaking new records. Nevertheless, the owners stubbornly refused to carry out re-asphalting, which would be an absolute must on the undulating course. During the pandemic break, the Most region took its chance to secure a contract with Dorna for the 2021 season and especially afterwards. Since then, the test track near the small town of Most, which is also popular with truck manufacturers, has been a permanent fixture in the WSBK calendar. Despite its somewhat strange layout, it is certainly no loss, especially for fans from Central Europe, since German events have also been a thing of the past at the Lausitzring since 2017. Germans and Austrians in particular have a partly close journey, which was already an advantage for Brno at the time.

Thanks to Marco Melandri, BMW has already won twice in the Czech Republic, albeit at the Masaryk Ring near Brno. Apart from the little Italian, Yukio Kagayama, Alex Lowes and Scottie Redding, only WSBK world champions have won the 14 rounds held in this country to date. No other driver has achieved more than Max Biaggi’s four victories in races over the full distance. Johnny Rea’s first victory, back then for Ten Kate Honda, was 14 years ago – an incredible record!
Our photo from the last race of the 2018 Superbike World Championship in Brno, taken from the VIP area on the roof of the main building. On the first two starting positions are the Kawasaki duo Tom Sykes (on the right in the picture) and next to him Jonathan Rea, who won the first race and crashed in the second, hindered by his teammate. The latter switched to BMW for the following year.

What awaits visitors in Most 2024?

Anyone who has not reserved a parking space will have to arrive early if they do not want to be late at the track. In this case, they should also plan on a fairly long walk, because usually everything near the autodrome is full of parked cars and police officers rigorously turn away those looking for a parking space. In contrast to Brno, there are no huge parking areas here, but the surrounding meadows have usually been reserved for this. Opposite the start-finish straight are the only covered grandstands and this may be of some importance for the weekend given the current weather forecast for Brüx, the German name of the nearby town. Because the 4,212-kilometer-long course is very long, there is no place like the hill inside turn 8 in Misano, from which you can see a large part of the track. In this respect, the relatively long hill opposite the start-finish is probably the place with the best view in Most. There is never a lack of excitement, which has not been a given in the WSBK, especially recently.

Aerial view of the beautifully situated race track of Most, with the finish line 22 in the foreground on the left and the small lake in the background, where there is a campsite. To the right of this is the small town, with very few overnight accommodation options, similar to Alcaniz at Motorland Aragon (© Autodrom Most).

Many good reasons to visit the Czech round

If you like drinking beer, the Czech Republic is the place for you, but be careful with the alcohol content. Many types have an alcohol content similar to wine, at 11 or 12 percent, but they are all good, of course, and very cheap compared to other countries. In Italy, half a liter in a restaurant or bar costs about four times as much. This is one of the reasons why we are really looking forward to visiting the Autodrom after Misano. As a rule, hard-fought races and close decisions are almost guaranteed here. Because there are hardly any overnight accommodation options in Most for the WSBK weekend, you are sure to find a nice hotel in one of the nearby towns such as Teplice or Chomutov. Even from Prague and Dresden, the Autodrom is not far. Motorcycles and trikes do not require a vignette in the Czech Republic, by the way. This is one of the reasons why we always, or at least mostly, travel to races in this country on two wheels. Hospitality is not just a word here, as in Saxony, and for this reason you usually feel comfortable and very well looked after as a tourist. Many people understand either English or German and there are many good restaurants with prices that one can only dream of in other Central European countries today.

Push start in Brno on the old Masaryk Circuit in the 1960s. The Czech Republic has a long tradition in motorsport. Even the time behind the “Iron Curtain” could not change that. We always fondly remember many unforgettable visits to this hospitable country.

The current ranking of the best WorldSBK riders

In order to illustrate the common mistake of equating sprint races with races with full points and over the full distance, we took the trouble to compile current statistics with the most successful riders in the Superbike World Championship to date. In contrast to MotoGP, both the official side (FIM and Dorna) and the vast majority of reporters in the WorldSBK incorrectly equate sprint results with the actual world championship races on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. However, because only half points are awarded in the Tissot Sprint Race, there is no real podium at the awards ceremony and only the first nine receive any world championship points for their placing, this is complete nonsense. Since in MotoGP the races over the full distance go down in history as Grand Prix, in contrast to WSBK everyone is wary of this statistical error, which also involves an unfair mixed calculation compared to previous heroes. Our current graphic is also quite interesting for another reason. This summary makes it clear that Bautista achieved his record number of victories in just three and a half years of World Championship racing, which many observers have long seen as proof of the superiority of his machine over the competition and not of the driver.

WorldSBK 2012 with Max Biaggi ahead of Eugene Laverty (both Aprilia) and Davide Giugliano (Ducati). It was the season with the closest final result in history, when Tom Sykes missed his first title for Kawasaki by just half a point and only got his chance a year later. Predicting the winner was usually impossible then, just as it was in the golden 1990s and the decade that followed.
To illustrate how many manufacturers were capable of winning back then, here is our summary of the 2012 season in numbers. There were no fewer than 9 different winners (just like in 2000, for example) and the title was only decided in the very last race of the year. Five different manufacturers were represented at the top of the podium and the only two race wins for Ten Kate Honda were achieved by a certain Jonathan Rea.

Most successful WorldSBK riders over the full distance

In terms of full-distance Superbike racing, Alvaro Bautista is still well outside the top three and Toprak would even be behind Colin Edwards (31 wins and 2 world titles) and Chaz Davies (32 wins) in our list. This is the only number comparable to before 2019, as there were only two races before that and no sprint race. Incidentally, Troy Corser would certainly have been much more successful in his prime if he hadn’t wasted three years from 2002 to 2004 on the ultimately failed “Foggy Petronas” project on the 3-cylinder FP1 with 900 cc. With one year as a test and development pilot and two years with only one podium in the second before moving to Suzuki. Today, these years of the Australian are reminiscent of Bautista’s time in 2020 and 2021 (with a third place each) at HRC Honda, with only one podium each. However, his successors Iker Lecuona (2022) and Xavi Vierge (2023) also made it onto the podium with the lightning-fast CBR-1000RR-R. As you can clearly see in our graphic below, Toprak and especially Alvaro were able to achieve their many victories in a comparatively very short period of time. 2022 with only 3 different winners and 2023 with 4 were also two of the most one-sided years in WSBK history, while in 2021 there were still five when Razgatlioglu won his first title on the Yamaha R1 and the title fight was not decided until shortly before the end.

Because the Turk is expected to win many more races in the next 7 rounds of the year, he is already listed behind Troy Corser. The latter competed over a very long period of time against a much stronger and broader opposition in terms of the number of competitive manufacturers and riders than today’s top WSBK riders. For more information, see our richly illustrated history of the WorldSBK on this page.

World Championship standings before round 6 of 12

Provided that Razgatlioglu does not miss the finish line in the Czech Republic due to crashes or technical failures, we can expect him to dominate again next weekend. In this respect, this could already be a preliminary decision in the title fight before the first of two Portugal rounds (after the unsurprising cancellation of the Balaton Park event in Hungary, Estoril was added to the calendar as the eleventh round as a replacement). Unless the two Aruba.it Ducati factory riders Bulega and Bautista can get back into the lead for the first time since Assen and challenge Toprak for the win. However, one should also keep an eye on Kawasaki ace Alex Lowes and Barni Ducati privateer Danilo Petrucci as potential spoilsports. Perhaps even the Yamaha hopefuls Andrea Locatelli, Remy Gardner, Domi Aegerter or even a resurgent Johnny Rea and perhaps one of the BMW guys like Scott Redding, Michael van der Mark or Garrett Gerloff can play along. The first two in particular had a lot of bad luck at the start of the season and were still up there at the front on a few occasions. For private pilots Andrea Iannone and Sam Lowes (both Ducati), Most is new territory and it will certainly be interesting to see how well the two undisputedly very fast men will find their way in the Czech Republic.

Only Portimão with the seventh round and Aragon as the tenth event are tracks where Ducati could still have a clear advantage due to better acceleration and a slightly higher top speed than its opponents. At all the other racetracks on the calendar, including of course the Autodrom Most, the rider is likely to make the difference.

WorldSBK schedule for Round 6 in Most

Friday
10.20 – 11.05 – SBK Free Practice 1
15.00 – 15.45 – SBK Free Practice 2
Saturday
9.00 – 9.20 – SBK Free Practice 3
11.00 – 11.15 – Superpole
14.00 – SBK Race 1
Sunday
9.00 – 9.10 – SBK Warm-up
11.00 – Superpole race
14.00 – SBK Race 2

Unless otherwise stated, this applies to all images (© WorldSBK).