Editor

With the start of the 2012 FIM Superbike World Championship about to take place in Australia at the end of next month an updated entry list has now been issued by the FIM. There will be fully 24 official full-time entries for the 25th anniversary edition of the championship, an impressive total given the ongoing global financial crisis, with officially supported squads and privateer teams representing six major manufacturers - Aprilia, BMW, Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki and Suzuki.


The lion's share of grid places - seven - will be taken by riders on Ducati machinery but there will also be five BMW riders, four from Kawasaki, three each from Aprilia and Honda, plus two Suzukis.


The nationalities of the riders are spread among ten different countries, Italy once more the best represented in numerical terms with eight - fully one third of the permanent field. Next most numerous are the British with five, then the Spanish with three and the French two. Lone riders from America, Japan, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Ireland and Australia complete the 24.


Teams and riders have been switched around like any other season and there are a good number of full season rookies on show such as Chaz Davies, Raffaele De Rosa, Leandro Mercado, Lorenzo Zanetti, Hiroshi Aoyama and Davide Giugliano. World Supersport graduate David Salom has had a season in SBK before, as has John Hopkins (albeit his was curtailed by injury) but there is one notable absentee from the entry in Noriyuki Haga, one of the legends of this category of racing.


Grillini and Pro Ride are two teams with previous WSBK experience, but the ParkinGO Aprilia Racing outfit are first time SBK entrants, having only raced in World Supersport before.







Source: World Superbike

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Kawasaki Racing