When Bridgepoint announced the other day – and just before the World Superbike championship finale – that WSBK’s will now be run under Dorna’s command there was an immediately backlash from fans afraid that Dorna will soon start to change – for the worse – in what many erroneously consider a world level, but ‘grass roots’ championship (when BMW Motorrad spends 14million euros just this season – no way can it be considered grass roots) in order to favour the highly rarefied atmosphere of MotoGP.
The WSBK paddock wasn’t immune from the news and the new situation has raised a million question marks from everyone intrinscally invovled in the Superbike championship.
Apparently Dorna’s CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta was to have made an appearance at the French circuit to allay fears and discuss the future, but he wisely decided to stay away and let the 2012 championship finish in style and he’ll discuss the new re-organization during the Motegi round next weekend, however other Dorna lackeys are at Magny-Cours wandering around and studying everything, including how vendor booths are run.
This morning and for the first time since the announcement and after a deafening silence from Paolo Flammini, a brief press conference was held and Italian website infomotogp.
com filmed it (video above).
Flammini tried to assure everyone that the two championships will remain separate (as it has to per EU merger laws) and that the 2013 rules that have been discussed will go ahead as planned and be ratified tomorrow.
The Italian manager added that he cannot comment on the new re-organization – that is up to Dorna (it seems that not even Flammini knows what plans Dorna has) however he will collaborate and aid the passage of World Superbikes into the hands of the Spanish company, but his personal position is still unknown and considering his past battles with Carmelo Ezpeleta, we may have just seen the last of Paolo Flammini.
