The Superbike Cup is proving to be a popular addition to JK Tyre’s motorsport stable, with the potential to attract plenty of participants. And maybe even manufacturers!
The main draw of the JK Tyre’s motorsport program over the course of its 18 seasons has been the development series in racing and karting in which India’s best known racing prospects got their careers started.
Whether one always agrees with the methods and machines that race under the JK Tyre banner, one cannot deny the fact that Narain Karthikeyan, Karun Chandhok, Armaan Ebrahim, Aditya Patel and now recently Jehan Daruvala and Arjun Maini have all had some involvement with the company in some way or another in their formative years, and even beyond.
But when it comes to the matter of providing pure entertainment value, development series can get a little hard to follow for those outside the hardcore motorsport fanbase. Such as the thousands of spectators that JK Tyre, along with its partner Volkswagen Motorsport try to rope into coming to the Buddh International Circuit through the distribution of passes via their dealer networks. Invariably the biggest cheers at such events come during the VW Polo stunt show where the crowd in the main grandstand get to watch drivers fooling around and having fun.
A DASH OF FUN
But what if you could add a bit of racing to the mix where the focus is more on passionate racers having fun and fighting for position? That is where the Superbike Cup seems to have fit in since last year. The sight of the fastest and most powerful road-legal sports bikes available in the country racing each other has given those in attendance something to get invested in on a more visceral level than arguably the more marketing oriented Volkswagen Vento Cup and the development focused JK Racing India Series and LGB F4.
One can make the comparison to popular superbike and touring car series and championships in other parts of the world where the crowds come to see road legal machinery race each other hard. Owing to its popularity, Triumph seems to have gotten on-board as its Daytona 675Rs fill up the entire grid in the 600cc category for the JK Superbike Cup.
MANUFACTURER DRAW
Hopefully other manufacturers will also be willing to back eager riders so that both the 600 and 1,000cc categories can get some factory backing and prevent the formation of anything resembling one-make racing. We have enough of those, to be perfectly honest.
Of course, as a sickening looking crash in one of the races showed, pure amateure zeal, should not stand in the way of safety and rider selection. Being eager to race on two wheels with well over 100bhp at your command is no good if you end up as road kill.
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