With the economic shit storm, should MotoGP and the Superbike World Championship merge?

The short answer: yes.

Ducati boss Claudio Domenicali doesn’t agree, and I’m not sure whether to be surprised by that or not – since his company spends a lot of money participating in both championships.

Here’s my thinking.

MotoGP is a prototype series, so it is to bikes what Formula 1 is to cars. World SBK is based on road models, so is to bikes what the World Touring Car Championship is to cars.

A Formula 1 car is vastly different to a touring car, in just about every way – aesthetically, technically, and how it races on the track. So the existence of both makes sense.

But compare a MotoGP bike to a superbike, and you only really have technical differences – and I’m not sure that even those technical differences are that great. So what’s the benefit?

The only argument I can come up with is the increased capacity of two grids over one. But I’m not convinced that the racing would suffer if MotoGP riders ended up in a combination of the world and national superbike championships – in fact I think the racing would probably be improved.

The only losers might be some of the less talented riders currently on the world stage, taking a financial knock to drop to national level. And I can live with that.

So what am I missing?