width:300px; margin:5px 0px 5px 10px;" align="center"black solid; margin-bottom:2px;" width="300" /The signs were there. In the last few races of the year the Pirelli riders in World Superbike - that would be all of them - finally managed to break

Pirellis will probably never be uttered in public. But without doubt his choice of Pirellis will be the same as everyone else's choice of Pirellis, at every track.I have often exhorted that Ducati can never be written off, and even with Bayliss's long term

that the old first world is their best base for future operations. So there are advantages to being smaller in scale and fag free after all.Rubber SoulFew would now deny that the Pirelli spec tyre thing has worked on most important levels, even if there may

and Honda, have launched into a relative tirade against Pirelli, providing meat for the scandal hungry members of the press corps. The complaint is not the speed, or outright grip of any one product. It is the claim that they can use a whole series of tyres

level, only Bayliss and very few others had true factory twins on Michelins in his SBK glory years, when all else had 750c fours and/or less effective tyres. Now everyone has the same Pirelli rubber, and even if some riders have the ability to go faster

, and it may well change again, as early as next year."Underpinning every race effort in the world are tyres. In all but Pirelli-only World Superbikes the type of tyre you have fitted to your rims - and even your perceived level within your tyre supplier's list

contract, a unique thing these days. The reasons for HRC and Michelin pitching up in the UK are more than singular, but in simple terms they preferred to do a lot of their tyre testing (not possible in SBK with the Pirelli monorubber rule) and preparations