Three of some kind

Round 9 Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Spain, 17-19 September 2021 WorldSBK Championship

THE DAYS OF predictable racing in WorldSBK have long gone and the Barcelona Catalunya weekend was the perfect illustration of that. We had two changes of championship lead in as many days, and even unheard of terminal technical issues that arrived at just the wrong time for one of those championship challengers.

In Superpole qualifying, on the revised 4.657km version of Catalunya, Tom Sykes (BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) set the new track best alight at the end of the warm and sunny morning session, with his 1m40.408sec, fully 0.286sec faster than second placed Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pata Yamaha with Brixx). Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team) ended his previously perfect 2021 Superpole run of eight in succession on Saturday and was almost half a second slower than Sykes.

Then the fun really started when rains arrived just as the WorldSBK riders were expecting a