BRITISH GP2 A QUICK GIMMICK OR THE ROAD TO GREATNESS ?

There’s no denying that us Brits have a serious hold on the superbike class the world over. I mean, just look at World Superbikes; there’s more British flags than you could shake a stick at, and out of the last 26 years of racing, the title has come back to our very shores on half of those occasions. Yep, 13! Mind you, with the absolute ferocity and competitiveness of our thriving British Superbike Championship, we shouldn’t really be too surprised.

But then again, here lies the problem. Although we seem to be world beaters where production bikes are concerned, we just don’t seem to have that last few per cent when it comes to prototype machinery. Yeah, Danny Kent has taken a Moto3 title, but if we stick that to one side, we haven’t actually had a champ in the premier class since 1976, where the one and only Barry Sheene took the spoils. Now that was 19 years before I was even born... how can that be right?

Well, there are loads of reasons that are thrown about. You’ll hear a lot of people chatting about the financial side of things, as compared to the hero status that the Italians and the Spanish get especially, people in the U.K just aren’t as deeply interested; where Marquez is on the same level as Messi in Spain, Crutchlow is probably just about in the same category as a League One footballer over here – if he’s lucky. But then again, he hasn’t won a silly amount of races, let alone a bundle of championships, so the MotoGP news never hits the (mainstream) media anywhere near as much as, say, F1 with Lewis Hamilton who’s battering the field right now. That brings us to point number two: there just isn’t the cash that there used to be. So there isn’t enough wonga to make a GP champ, so in turn, there isn’t enough interest generated in the MSM,