Introducing The New (UK) WSBK & BSB Crew

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long, and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk. Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 826.

I'm your host today, Richard Jowett, and I have great pleasure in introducing our new, let's call them English side, co-hosts. Now those of you that caught 825 will have heard Jake Rower come onto the pod for the first time. As you know, Jake and Jim, with some inputs from Scott Bolton as well, are going to be covering Moto America. But I'm delighted to present to you Carl Hunn and Danny Smith. Now we're talking a moment about what the plans are going to be for 2026, but we'll We'll start off with Carl and then move on to Danny in terms of Carl, tell us a little bit about yourself, where bikes fit into your life and what made you throw your hat into the ring for coming onto this show?

Hi Rich, thanks for the introduction. Well, what made me frame my hat into the ring for Motopod is I've been listening to it since 2003. So over 23 years now this year. Where do bikes fit in? Well, when I was 16 I got a Moped and I've had a motorbike ever since really.

So 2008, 2009, I just switched to complete track riding only on motorbikes. And then my son was born in 2011. So I took like nearly 10 year break from motorbikes. But then sort of shortly after Covid got back into bikes, said I'd do the odd track day, but then it obviously spiralled from there. So now I only do track days now.

I don't ride on the road anymore. I just do track days. So I try and do one or two a month from basically April, March until October. Dodging the showers. Yeah, yeah.

That's where I fit into the equation. Nice. Well, great to have you on board. And Danny, you and I bumped into each other in Corfu on holiday by pure coincidence. And there you were with your bike t-shirt on.

So we ended up chatting and your wife was bedecked in VR46 gear as I remember. So we got chatting and that kind of stuck with me because you are a man that likes the roads as well. So tell us a bit about where you come from. Yeah. Bikes as a kid used to be motocross and then kind of fell in love with the four wheels, went to Formula One and then met my partner Helen.

And she, like you say, Valentina Rossi, biggest fan. She had a cardboard cut out of him at her last wedding when she was married before. And yeah, took me to Silverstone and I fell in love with it. Massively fell in love with it. The goosebumps, just the atmosphere, the noise, everything.

And then we went over to the Ironman. I am in 2023 and it's not like anything I've seen. You're inches away from them as they come past at 180 miles an hour. There's nothing like it. But yeah, two wheels now.

I've got my old CBR in the garage. Just waiting for some nice weather to get back into it. And for your shoulder to heal up because you've just come out of surgery. Yes, good six months, I think, before I can actually get fully back into anything. But yeah, it's a long road ahead.

Well, great. It's great to have you both on board. And on behalf of myself, Jim and everybody else that's been involved with the show down the years and obviously a few of the old co-hosts still are involved with the show in the background and come on board from time to time. Thank you for coming on board. You know, it's a lot of fun.

I hope you enjoy it. It's a lot of work. You know, there's quite a bit of planning, particularly if you go to BSB Rounds or World Supers or Roads in your case, Danny. I don't know if you'll get to any of the Roads events. You can tell us about that in a little while.

So I've always found it really enjoyable. It's certainly great talking to some of the bike racers who are almost always very good company and happy to chat and outside of MotoGP anyway, reasonably accessible most of the time. So yeah, I think it's going to be great. Now, I've felt for a long time, I was saying when we just jumped on, Danny, one night before Carl joined us, if you go back to the Dave Neal days, we used to cover BSB quite a bit. But of course, in those days, there were far, far fewer MotoGP races for one thing as well.

So with the way that that series has expanded, it's become very hard for Jim and I just to keep up with MotoGP, let alone anything else. So that was why I was conscious that, you know, Superbike racing, whether it's on the roads or if it's Worlds or even the better domestic championships, it's something we really ignore our own costs, really. So I was keen that we got into a bit of the Moto America stuff because there's some big names in that series. And obviously, BSB has been brilliant as long as I can remember. I mean, I went to my first race in BSB at Thruxton in 1996, I think it was.

It was the year when Whitten was on the Cadbury's boost Yamaha anyway. So whether that was 95 or 96, I can't quite remember. It was a long time ago. And BSB has been pretty fantastic, really, without exception ever since. And WorldTubers has been up and down, hasn't it?

But remains very, very good racing as well as I'm concerned. And we need to be covering it on the show. So yeah, with Jake and Jim covering MotoA and Scott Bolton said he'll sort of jump in and do some stuff on his local rounds as well. And then with you guys covering the Superbikes on this side of the pond, I think it's going to be great. So we're going to start off by just having a quick chat about Liberty because it is relevant to WorldSuperbikes potentially, because unlike what I thought was going to happen, I thought that WorldSuperbikes might get cut off the Liberty deal and that they would have to go under new ownership.

That hasn't happened yet. So I think you had a chance to listen to the last show that we did with Jim and Jake and Skyler. So any thoughts on Liberty, Carl? Yeah, so Liberty, I think it's going to be an interesting time, as you mentioned, particularly how they're going to manage the dynamic between MotoGP and WorldSuperbikes. I think as well, it's going to be interesting to see what they change from being Dawn to Liberty.

Yeah, we wait with bated breath. I think, again, sorry just to refer to MotoGP again, but you guys in the previous podcast referred to there's now sort of 22 races, I think, for MotoGP. Yeah, so in actual fact, it's 44 races when you take into account Sprint. So the question is, is there too much MotoGP? I mean, we don't really want to say that as fans, but yeah, it's 44 races too much.

And what will they push or what will they change? What will happen to WorldSuperbikes? Will it become the poor relation or will it grow stronger? Will they push more for a connection or a tie in with MotoGP? I think it's going to be interesting to see how Liberty manage both World Series.

Yeah, Danny, in terms of Liberty coming in and WorldSuperbike, I mean, is there a frustration with WorldSuperbikes that you would see as an opportunity or something you hope that Liberty addresses? My main worry is that it's going to be the lesser brother of MotoGP. The funding is going to be pushed into MotoGP. It's already got that larger population. The audience is bigger.

It's the celebrity status that MotoGP has. You were talking about it in the last podcast about the stories of the riders. And I think if Liberty can push that with Worlds as well as MotoGP, then I think it will pique the interest of everybody. But at the minute, I'm definitely concerned that it's going to be just left in the shadow of MotoGP and they're going to focus on that. Similar to Formula One, you don't see many single car series that Liberty would take an interest in other than the Formula One.

Yeah, no, I agree. One thing I didn't, because we ended up being a bit time restricted on the last show, one thing I didn't bring up and I'm keen to get your view is whether or not you think WorldSuperbike will ultimately become a supersport championship with MotoGP dropping to 840, whatever it is, 850s, let's say. Whether or not the absence of Superbike sales globally pretty much these days means that WorldSuperbike might become a kind of what is now WorldSuperSport. Any thoughts? I mean, potentially, I know bike sales have really dropped and you see it out on the roads, don't you?

You don't see all the old Superbikes blazing around and you don't hear it in the distance anymore. Potentially Liberty could push that more as being the single Superbike racing series out there. But again, until, it's silly season, isn't it? Until 2027 gets here, we're not going to know what that image of MotoGP looks like when they do drop to the 850s. Yeah, Carl, I mean, if WorldSuperbikes did go supersport, would that make it a poor relation or would you actually welcome that change?

It's a fear that I've got for both British Superbikes and WorldSuperbikes is that we lose the 1000cc bikes because from a spectacle point of view, I don't know, Danny, a few minutes ago mentioned the Isle of Man as well. From a spectacle point of view, there's nothing like seeing a liter bike at full chat. It's the cliche, isn't it? If that's what's needed to keep the racing going, then that's what we have to do. And as Danny mentioned, you know, there aren't as many Superbikes being sold now, in fact, in far less numbers.

I live in a bit of a bubble on track days because you see the latest Superbikes being used on track. But that is a very small bubble because that's people just buying them purely for track use, which is really where these bikes are only appropriate now. There are people still use them on the roads and fair play to those people. But these bikes now are producing over 200 horsepower. You know, you're going to get frustrated using them on the road.

So the track is the one. And if the numbers aren't there to justify the manufacturers producing the bikes, then there's no production bike series in that. So I would love to see the thousands continue. But we may see that commercial factors force us down to this lower capacity racing. OK, so in terms of worlds and BSP, then obviously we can't go into it in too much detail now.

And we don't need to because obviously there's going to be a whole host of shows now coming up on worlds and BSP. But anything in particular that's caught your attention in terms of changes or stuff that you're looking forward to in each of those two series? Starting off with you, Carl. So I think it's going to be very interesting in both series to see this new Ducati, the new Panigale V4. Of course, yeah.

Which is replacing obviously the existing Panigale V4. You're seeing a lot of teams in World Superbikes running this bike. When you look at that bike, it's moving closer and closer to sort of a MotoGP bike in terms of aero, in terms of power as well. We don't really know what the powers of MotoGP bikes now, but these liter bikes are getting more powerful. So it's very interesting to see that.

And then that's reflected also in the BSP paddock because we're seeing more people in the BSP paddock. So the current British champion is Kyle Ride. We're seeing him switch to a Ducati this year. We're seeing some other teams use this Ducati. So is it going to be the bike that smokes everybody because it's its first year?

Is it the start of its development? And it's not going to be quite there. I think it's going to be very interesting to see that. I have to say that I hadn't picked up on the fact that you wrote on your notes that Storm Stacey is going to be jumping on the Duke. Yeah, that's going to be like a mini bike round for him because I mean, he's huge, isn't he?

He's going to make that Ducati look absolutely tiny, which it is, isn't it? Pretty well compared to the BMW, which always seemed like a bigger bike to me. How about you, Danny? I think the same. I think it's six teams in the world that are using the new Ducati and four in the British, but we've seen in MotoGP that the Ducati is just, it is a difficult bike to beat.

Yes, Mark Marquez is one of the last remaining aliens, as you quite eloquently put him every time. But how that will translate into the worlds and British Superbikes, it'll be interesting to see because obviously with the British Superbikes, it's their stock. You've got only limited changes that they can make. It'll be interesting to see if Kyle Wright can get his third championship. Yeah, it should be a good season.

What do you think or how do you view post top rep, well, Superbike? Are you going to look forward to him? I mean, it's hard to say, look forward to him not being there because nobody's probably really looking forward to that. But who do you think is going to emerge to put up a fight to Booliga or is Booliga just going to have it all on his own? I think he's going to be up there, obviously.

He's the man to beat. But my kind of view would be, was he up there because he was chasing Toprak? He had that competition all the time. Who's going to be there to push him on? I mean, you've got Olivera coming across, very good rider.

Is he going to transition into the worlds as well? Hopefully. I think Toprak will be missed because he's a bit of a character and it'd be nice to see something like that coming out in the worlds. But yeah, I think Booliga will probably do this. Who have you got as a dark horse, Carl, for this coming season?

I think it's going to be very interesting to see how Jake Dixon does on the HRC Honda in World Superbikes. Just as an aside from the squadron of Ducattis we've got there, from a British point of view, especially what Jake Dixon can do on that Honda. As we've mentioned, you know, Toprak's left a big hole in World Superbikes by going to MotoGP. So yeah, there's kind of the feeling that maybe it's Booliga's title to lose. We've got to see where the cards fall, as I mentioned with this new Ducati.

And as Danny mentioned, you've got Olivera coming into the Rocket BMW team. So that was obviously last year's winning bike. But was it Toprak that made it the winning bike? Is it a bike that many people could win on? That's going to be an interesting thing to see.

Yeah, I think the jury's out on that. I'm in a relatively small group of people that have a bit of a flag waving session all the time for Ica Lecce owner. And I'm particularly interested to see how he is going to go on that Ducati. And I have him as my dark horse, provided he doesn't throw himself up the road and injure himself, which he does have a nasty habit of doing. But then most people on that Honda over the last few seasons have had that habit as well.

So yeah, World Supers is going to be interesting. And yeah, this new Ducati is going to be I mean, I suppose the worry is that it just becomes a bit like we've had in MotoGP over the last few years. And it just becomes an absolute I always use the word Armada. What did you use? Squadron was it?

Squadron? Yeah. Yeah, we'll go with that. The Squadron of Dukes. Yeah.

So that would be the main worry. OK, so in the interest of brevity, because we're trying to be strict on this, in terms of 2026, which rounds do you see yourselves being at? And Danny, you might be picking up some roads, perhaps. I don't know if you're going to be back at any of those this year. So Alton Park is my birthday weekend and it's my 40th.

So I'm going to try and persuade the other half to let me go to that one. We've discussed going to Thruxton as well in August. So hopefully be there. We were going to head across to the Isle of Man, but wedding plans coming up for next year. So that might be pushed into the year after.

But we've also started looking at the north west as well. Just looking at the scenery and everything and the racing over there. You know, it's a mass start grid. So that would be something different to the TT. Yeah.

OK. And can't you get to many? Because I'm just trying to remember you up in sort of the middle part of the country, aren't you, in terms of where you live? Yeah. So I'm fortunate in the fact that Alton Park is about 40 minutes for me to drive.

Donington's about an hour. So that's handy for my own personal track days, but also access to BSP races as well. So, yeah, try and get to Alton and Donington. I think we've got two or three rounds. Oh, yeah.

Cadwell's a possibility. Bit of a trek, but it's the end of August. But, you know, the spectacle of Cadwell is probably worth the drive. Quite a place. Yeah.

Well, I'll probably get myself down to Brands for one of the rounds. Thruxton is my sort of home track, I suppose. It's the closest one to me. So I generally go to that if I'm not away on holiday at that time of the year. But, yeah, I mean, obviously the BSP in the world is kind of going to be your area of expertise for this year, but I will go to a few races, hopefully this year.

I can never fall in love with Snetterton. I've been a few times and I find it quite a barren, soulless place. I don't know what it is because Norfolk's really lovely. But yeah, so I probably won't go to Snet, which is quite a long travel for me from here. Jim will be laughing his head off at the thought of a three hour drive.

I know I'm not going to be on long travel, but it is in the UK. So the plan is going to be that I'm tapping up Roadskin to see if they can help us out with a bit more merch for you guys. And hopefully they'll be able to do that so that we have some visibility whilst we're at the track. And again, we just need people that listen to the show to come and tap us on the shoulder and tell us that they like it. And, you know, we need to have a few things that we can hand out to people to get them to listen to the show and start to follow and get our numbers up.

So that's going to be sort of one of the big aims for the year on this side of the water, as well as over in America as well. And I mean, hopefully we just want to continue to bring as much content as possible, widen out, increase a few more interviews if we can get a few bits and pieces at some of the races that we individually go to and help each other out. And no doubt you guys will be able to jump on or be asked to jump on to some MotoGP shows as well. If Jim isn't around or I'm not around, I've got a bit of travel coming up this year and one thing and another, which always makes life difficult. But most of all, hopefully it's going to be enjoyable for you guys to participate in and nice for the listeners to enjoy on the pod when they're sort of traveling or whenever they listen to the pod.

So a closing thought from each of you, I guess, before we wrap this very, very brief intro show up. So, Danny, thoughts going forward? Really looking forward to it. It's it's been a good listen to and from work. So it's nice to be a part of it.

But hopefully we'll get some good content out there for listeners and push it in the right direction. Cool. And Carl? Yeah, as I mentioned, I've been listening for over 20 years now. So, yeah, I mean, when I first started taking so long to get involved in the build up to this recording, I was reminiscing because when I first started listening to this, it was a podcast, you know, you had to download it to your iPod.

You had to fire up iTunes on your desktop and then you'd wait for the weekly download of my iPod and you'd have to plug your iPod into the computer and then it synchronized with the computer and put the podcast on. So, yeah, it's a bit of an honor to be involved and, yeah, looking forward. Hopefully we can grow the listenership with some Superbike coverage. And, yeah, it's going to be good. Get all your track day buddies to subscribe as well.

Well, that's it. Spread the word at track days. It's quite often you'll see BSP races at the odd track day. So by all means, I'll ask the question. I won't be rude, but I'll ask the question if they could spare five minutes to have a brief interview.

The worst thing they can do is say no. So, yeah, anything like that, I'll ask the question and hopefully grow the listenership. Yeah, brilliant. Now, we're going to be back again fairly soon because it's just dawned on me. And I'm not going to say for you to, but the Philip Island is starting us off with World Superbikes next weekend, starting on Thursday or Friday the 20th.

So we will come back, the three of us, and figure out how we're going to cover World Superbike. We've been chatting. We probably won't do long format race reviews because there's too many races, particularly if you have double headers where you've got BSP and World Superbikes on the same weekend. So we'll just have to figure out how we put this together and what we cover and what we don't. But it's going to be good.

I'm really looking forward to it. And once you two guys are up and running fully, you know, we'll leave you to it and we'll see how we go. So once again, just remains for me to say thank you very much indeed. A for listening to the show for so long, particularly in your case, Carl, and yeah, for allowing me to press gang you into doing this. As I say, it takes a bit of work, but it is a lot of fun.

And it'll open up some new doors and avenues for you guys to get involved with as well, hopefully, because I've found being in and around the paddocks and getting to know a few of the people in the teams and stuff is, yeah, it's a lot of fun. And people are generally very friendly, welcoming and do as much as they can to help. So I'm sure you'll find the same. So on we go and we'll see you in a week or so. It's time to say cheers.

Cheers, guys.