(Photo: Brian J Nelson)

What Exactly Would A Superbike World Cup Be?

The basic idea is that the 'World Cup of Superbike Racing' would be an annual one-weekend event scheduled deep in the offseason. It would not be positioned to usurp the importance of winning a Superbike World Championship title, but rather held up as a prestigious event in its own right -- sitting snugly right beneath it. The biggest Superbike race of the year, winning it would be viewed as approximately on par with winning a seasonal domestic championship.

The field would consist of a number of automatic qualifiers -- say, the top six riders from the previous season's Superbike World Championship, the top three from the British Superbike and AMA Pro Superbike Championships, and the top two from each of the Australian, Japanese, Canadian, Italian, and German Superbike Championships.

Importantly, there would also be a number of special invitations reserved not only for notable Superbike riders who failed to earn an automatic qualifier due to injury and other circumstance, but also for graduating Supersport riders, and of course, the linchpin of the entire plan: MotoGP superstars.

When And Where

The Superbike World Cup would be held sometime during the MotoGP testing ban (early December-late January), most likely in January in order to serve as the coming out party for riders hired by new teams/manufacturers whose old contracts traditionally do not expire until the end of the calendar year.

As such, appropriate venues with climates that could support that date must be selected. The event could be "awarded" to a different track each year. Circuits that might potentially fit the bill include Phillip Island (doubling as a test for World Superbike riders), Sepang, and the Circuit of the Americas.