Photo: World Superbike
The World Superbike championship resumes this weekend, with the racers headed to the Lausitzring in Germany after their lengthy summer break.
Going into the weekend, Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea is the man to beat at 368 points. He’s sitting atop a 46-point lead, and is the favourite to take it all again this year. His teammate, former champion Tom Sykes, has 322 points, another whopping lead over third-place Chaz Davies (Ducati, 260 points). Unless Kawasaki’s factory team manages to take each other out of the running in a disastrous crash, it’s hard to imagine Team Green not taking the title again, with Sykes and Rea having 13 race wins between them this year.
Meanwhile, down in the support classes, Canadian Braeden Ortt is toiling away in Supersport. Ortt has yet to get into the points this year. He’s the youngest Supersport racer ever, and is likely hoping for a change in his luck after the long summer break.
Stacey Nesbitt is likely feeling the same way. She’ll be back in action in the women’s class of the European Junior Cup. After spending the summer roadracing in Canada on her CBR600RR, the question is, how will she handle her return to the EJC’s CBR650s? In the first races of this year’s series, Nesbitt generally outraced all her female competitors except Avalon Biddle. She was quite clear this summer that her goal was first to get past Biddle, then everyone else.
