‘You cannot be serious’, as a mop-haired tennis player famously swalked when berating a bemused umpire. Eight winners out of 12 races in British Superbikes (more of that later) while in clear contrast WorldSBK is starting to look like a one-horse race, the challenge from Scott Redding fading badly.
It’s difficult to say what’s happened to Scott. He says he’s got issues with the bike. He can’t ride it the way he wants to. But this happens. Before the season started, we all said that Scott will be really quick… and he is, but over a season, somebody like Jonathan Rea (and there ain’t many people like Jonathan Rea) will be very difficult to beat .

You can best him in one race. You can sometimes best him in a couple of races, but over a full season and given the things that are going to happen, and at every circuit he and the team grind out the results.

And as far as I can see it’s mostly down to him. Since he got on the Kawasaki has anyone really held a candle to him for long? This is why being his team-mate is a bit of a poisoned challis. As well as being the fastest rider he just seems to get the best out of every set of circumstances.

Everybody said that Scott Redding, having dominated his debut season in BSB, would be a real contender, perhaps the only one. and for a while it did look like that was the case. Now it looks like it’ll take a mistake for Rea to lose his 6th title. But it’s not for me to apportion blame… and blame for what exactly? Sitting a good second in the championship behind the most successful rider that championship has ever seen? Not exactly a disaster so far as I can see.

This weekend was a bit of a weird one for Scott though because his team-mate, Chaz Davies, seemed to make the bike work pretty well and got his first win in a while. We all enjoyed seeing that because we like Chaz. He’s a great bloke.

But Scott seemed to struggle a little bit more than he has other places, and it’s a place that he should, on paper, know better than most of the rest of the paddock, it being a regular grand prix circuit and never before on the WorldSBK calendar.

What I really couldn’t understand is why he went for a different tyre to everyone else in the Superpole race? Why he went for the SC0 when the rest of the grid went with the SCX (a tyre developed for the shorter race) is difficult to understand. If you’ve qualified 25th and you want to take a risk when it comes to tyres, then that’s fine because if it fails you haven’t lost too much.

But when you are vying for a championship, it’s surely safer to go with whatever your championship rivals have got on. Then you’re in the same boat whatever happens. It’s a weird one. I couldn’t really understand why he alone (with the exception of Sylain Barrier) - went with the zero. Everybody else went for the X, and the X proved the best option.

And it’s the rider who ultimately chooses the tyres. The rider has influence on everything. We were chatting with people at Oulton and it has always been the case. Even with data acquisition and all these teams and riders having a couple of data engineers who plug the bike in every time it comes into the pits to download all the information that’s stored within the bikes ECU on suspension movement, engine parameters, revs, brake pressure and lean angle, et cetera, even with all that the bottom line is that two different riders will always want slightly different setups to give them confidence to push to what they feel is the limit.

So compared to car racing, with motorcycles it comes down to more of the bloke who’s at the controls. Car racing is much more of an exact science.

This means that in bike racing rider feedback is still vitally important, and the best way to get the bike as good as it can be is to be as honest as you can with your team… but that is sometimes at odds with the mentality of a top-level rider.

You need to be sitting on the grid every weekend thinking you have a chance of winning… so if you don’t win it’s easier to blame your bike or the way it’s been set up or your tyres than it is to say you were baeten by some blokes who were better than you !

Foggy was the prime example of the British bloke who absolutely considered himself the best rider in the world. Whether you agree with it or not, he did. So then it’s difficult to come off your bike and say, “Well, I didn’t do so well today. I got beaten by a couple people who were riding better than me.” Because then how can reconcile that with definitely the best rider in the world?

I get the approach. His argument was always that he needed to think this way to be as good as he was and he was exceptionally good, so who can argue?

Although I was in the same race as him a couple of times and can’t claim I know him, Eddie Lawson seemed to be quite honest when came to post race comments.

A couple of rides into his Honda contract after switching from Yamaha in 1989 I remember him being quoted as saying he didn’t think he was riding it so well but the bike was so fast he needed a different lane down the straights – the ‘Honda Lane’!

Everybody’s different. You’ve got to be the way you have to be. Some riders like to be the fittest person on the grid and if they’re not, they struggle a little bit mentally. Other riders go into it knowing that it’s more of a mental job and they can cope with missing a day at the gym or having a bottle of beer on a Sunday night and still be quick. It’s a weird thing, road racing.

Anyway, I digress slightly, back to WorldSBK…

Redding has shown some incredible pace already this season and given more time on the bike, more testing, et cetera, you’d have to think he’d be more consistent and develop a more close working relationship with his team.

I think we haven’t seen the best of Toprak Razgatlioglu yet. I think Rinaldi given a full factory bike (and there’s no question he’s getting some help from the factory already) would be able to run near the front most weekends.

The American, Garrett Gerloff, he’s been sort of batting to average until now. But what a meeting he had at Barcelona. So far this season every single circuit is new to him, the format is new, the electronics on the bike are new. never been in Europe before.

He’s really approached it with a good attitude. He said at the beginning of the season what he’s missing most is Mexican food. He likes really hot and spicy stuff. That to me says the man is kind of enjoying himself. . . and it also says to me we need to get him a big chicken vindaloo. This last weekend at Barcelona, the track clearly suited him and the Yamahas. Not only that, he was really enjoying it and was quite prepared to take a poke at the existing front runners as and when he could - not even as and when necessary. He did it when he could. I liked that.

We’ve been short a fast American in this championship. Definitely an American gives a bit more of an international feel. We used to see them in WSB. We used to have loads of them. Scott Russell, Doug Polen, Fred Merkel, Colin Edwards, Ben Spies. We’ve had some great Americans in this championship. And you can’t say you don’t enjoy what they bring to the post-race interviews.

But I’m leaving the best until last. The British Superbike Championship. Eight different winners this year. Eight different winners from twelve races. Every manufacturer has had a sniff at the podium. I think what we’re benefiting from is a set of rules that were well worked out. Even though people didn’t like them at first.

The fact is that for not stupid amounts of money they enabled teams to build a reasonably competitive superbike. But you can’t do that overnight. People have to be able to get into the rules and work with them over a reasonable period of time. I think we’re reaping the benefits now. It’s a brilliant, brilliant series.

It’s so competitive. In my day, I like to think I was going as fast as it was possible to go on that bike, and we probably were, but there was only three or four of us at the front.

Now there’s 12 or 13 riders that could have a go. It’s just a good, good championship. I think the circuits help to make it competitive too because you’ve got such a diverse set of tracks in this country. You couldn’t get two more different ones than the short circuit at Silverstone and then two weeks later going up to the beautiful Oulton Park. We’ve got places like Brands full circuit. We’ve got Cadwell in a normal year. Thruxton is completely different in nature.

So,although we have a good set of regs and it’s possible to produce a competitive bike out of any manufacturer, as well as that, each circuit will favor slightly different bikes and slightly different riders. It’s a diverse championship. It’s actually brilliant. I’m really sort of happy to be involved with it. You don’t know which way it’s going to go. It’s got a little bit of everything this year.

So, with 12 points covering four riders, who’s going to win with two race meetings and six races to go? Well, Josh Brookes is back in the game big time. I chatted with his team-mate Christian Iddon at Oulton. He’s probably the fittest of them all and he he’s gonna have a jump at it. Full marks to Paul Bird for signing him. Who knows?

O’Halloran is definitely due some good luck because he’s had so much bad luck over the years. Then obviously you can’t count out Glenn Irwin, an unbelievably determined man when it comes to the stick and lift. He will be definitely having a lash. So it’s nicely poised for Donington and Brands Hatch. It’s brilliant.