This year, the World Superbike Championship introduced a new minimum weight rule for the bike and rider combination. The aim is to level the playing field for riders of different statures, a measure that several riders had been requesting and is already used in other categories.
The lightest rider in the current field is Álvaro Bautista, who dominated the last two seasons with Aruba.it Ducati. And he is not pleased with the new regulations at all. The Spanish rider mentioned that the Panigale V4 R is already a more difficult bike to ride by nature: ‘I’m small and light so for me it is not easy to ride this kind of bike. For me, it is easier to ride a MotoGP because I have more control. Already, this bike is more difficult and when you add six or seven kilos more because you have a set-up on the bike the last two years like we did, but now with more kilos it is more difficult to ride’.
In an interview with Crash.net, Bautista emphasized that with more weight, more space will be needed to brake and even questioned the fairness of the 2024 regulations: ‘I think the rule is not fair. Already I struggle a lot with these kinds of bikes but everybody accepts it except me. It’s not fair to add more weight. In the end, the rule is not made for me, it’s for the championship but I’m the only rider who has to put weight on the bike. I’m the only rider that is penalised by this rule. And for me it’s not fair that, if me and Ducati work hard and well and we arrive at a good performance, that’s it’s fair to penalise good work. I understand that they want to make a very competitive championship, but I think it’s better to help the other manufacturers or the other riders like they did in MotoGP with some concession – but to improve their level, not to penalise our performance’.