A lot has been made of the combined age of the World Superbike podiums at Misano being 120 years old. To my mind that isn't so much of problem. Carlos Checa, Max Biaggi and, to some extent, Noriyuki Haga are world-class riders who should still be able to stick it on the box at least at that level.

What concerns me right now are the reasons behind why the young riders like Leon Haslam, Leon Camier, Jonathan Rea, Eugene Laverty are finding themselves in the gravel trap more often than they are on the rostrum. OK, that's something of an exaggeration but you get my point.

When traction control first came in no-one was crashing. It is almost as if now the riders or teams have been tuning it down and down, and bikes with 200 or more horsepower are just spitting them off, especially the riders who don't know any different. Or there is no-one in their garage who can operate the electronics properly, so it just gets turned off.

Years ago, the riders that had traction control just cleared off and the ones that didn't crashed trying to keep up. Maybe now the riders who have got TC dialled in and can make it work are clearing off and the rest are getting so frustrated with not being able to keep up, it gets turned off and kitty litter is the next port of call.

If the youngsters could just stay on the bloody things, they'd be right up there. Maybe the old men aren't crashing because it hurts at that age. It could be the older riders like it as it's quite safe whereas the youngsters are 'switch it off, switch it off, I can't go fast enough'.

I would hazard a guess the young riders are saying that traction control is holding them back so they want it turned off, so the team does that and the next thing their rider is in an ambulance. Checa and Biaggi are not better riders to the tune of the current points gaps.

Initially, guys like Checa and Biaggi wouldn't have used traction control, didn't like it, couldn't get used to it. The younger riders loved it because they had the throttle pinned everywhere and it wasn't hurting. In fact, going back, the first time GSE had it, we found that Leon Haslam was opening the throttle going into corners…

At the time, that was why he was kicking Gregorio Lavilla's arse in testing because he couldn't handle the traction control, hated it. I honestly believe now the older guys are used to it, they feel safe with it and, although it doesn't feel faster, the laptimes are faster.

Checa and Biaggi are not uncatchable, it is the over-exuberance of the youngsters that is letting them get away. Haslam, Rea, Laverty, Camier, all of those guys are fast and have proved it but at the moment, they're not fast for long enough.

If the laptime is 1'30s then you have to do 25 laps at 1'30s and then you'll win the race. It's not rocket science. When Bayliss and Edwards were running Michelins in WSB, Neil Hodgson was on Dunlops and he was finishing seventh, eighth. I told him to forget about beating Bayliss and Edwards, that wasn't going to happen, just concentrate on getting third and then he started to compete with the other two.

Because he just wanted to be third, his laptimes became consistent and he was an easy third, which sometimes became second and I honestly believe all of those young riders can do the laptimes once or twice. Certainly from Camier, he has been brilliant in coming from nowhere and putting in fast laptimes right at the end. This tells me it's not Checa and Biaggi that are so much better, it's the youngsters trying to win the race on the first lap...