From a press release issued by the Plummer-Menapace Group on behalf of Pirelli:

PIRELLI REVIEWS ITS FIRST YEAR AS WORLD SUPERBIKE SPEC TIRE

Did It Fulfill The Objective Of Closer Racing And A Level Playing Field

(Rome, GA) The 2004 World Superbike season is over and Ducati Fila’s James Toseland is the king, thanks to his one-two finishes at the last round at France’s Magny Cours. Thus ended the first season that World Superbike along with its World Supersport and European Superstock siblings introduced a spec tire rule and handed the duties to Pirelli.

The rule’s primary objective was closer racing, a more “level playing field” that didn’t see special one-off, back-door tires doled out to the top teams. Everybody would have equal tires of consistent quality, tires that were developed and tested with all the different teams; tires that, once tried, had to be shared with all of the manufacturer’s teams and approved by all of the teams before they could be used at the next round; tires for four-cylinder bikes, twins and triples. And Pirelli had to provide five to six thousand of them for every race weekend, in a minimum of three different front and rear compounds optimized for each track. (They brought five different fronts and six different rears to France.) A mammoth task that, if successful, would mean great racing and a huge feather in Pirelli’s cap.

But, just like last year, the factory Ducati team won the championship. In fact, its riders finished first and second again. So what changed with Pirelli and the spec tire rule?

Practically everything. Last year, a staggering 218 points separated the first three riders at season’s end (103 points between the two factory riders, 115 points between second and third place). This year, there were fewer than 100 points between the first five riders. Neil Hodgson won every race up to Laguna Seca last year, while this year’s championship was called “one of the most exciting and closely contested” in the 17-year history of the series. It came down to the final weekend. Four riders had a chance of winning it all: Toseland, his teammate Regis Laconi, Ten Kate Honda’s Chris Vermeulen, and Renegade Ducati Koji’s Noriyuki Haga. A few rounds back, only eight points separated the four of them.

At Magny Cours, Laconi didn’t even make the front row of the grid. And the pole sitter was none other than Troy Corser on the Foggy Petronas. Race one had four different manufacturers on the front row: Ducati, Honda, Foggy Petronas, and the Yamaha R1 of local wildcard Sebastien Gimbert (a team member of the newly-crowned, also-Pirelli-shod, Yamaha GMT94 World Endurance road racing champions) finished fourth in both Magny Cours races – on a Yamaha.

When it was all over, only nine points separated Toseland and Laconi. “Nitro Nori” Haga won race two his sixth win of the year – in the final round to finish third in the championship, 28 points behind Laconi. Vermeulen’s two rare DNFs earned him no points, but he held a solid fourth place in the championship in his rookie season finishing with four victories and nine podiums. (Who knows what would have happened had two different electrical gremlins not knocked him out of both races.)

In all, six different riders won races in 2004’s 22-race series. The two factory Ducati riders accounted for less than half of them, compared to last season when factory teammates Hodgson and Reuben Xaus won 20 of the races. Also, ten different riders earned podiums this year.
Did the spec-tire rule work?

“We had a Michelin contract last year,” said former SBK champion, Troy Corser. “but the tires they gave us were two seconds a lap slower than what Hodgson and Xaus had. Control tires have eliminated that kind of crap …”

Kenny Roberts, Sr. agrees. “When Superbikes went to control tires, everybody thought they were crazy – but I reserved judgment. Still, I really thought they would have more problem than they have and it would be better for us and a lot of other teams if there was a one-tire rule in MotoGP, too. I would instigate that instantly for next year.”

With all is said and done, and with a huge round of thanks and appreciation to the hundreds of Pirelli workers who made it all happen, Pirelli believes it did indeed produce tires that provided “closer racing action” and a “level playing field” for World Superbike competition.
Giorgio Barbier, Pirelli Racing Manager, said after the final round: “We will start making our preparation for next season next week, when we test at Mugello with Ducati and James Toseland, the new champion. We will be testing our new tires for next season. By the time we have the next test at Valencia in November we will already have a lot of new bikes, 2005 models, so we will really have some new stuff to test, specifications for next year. These will be confirmed for next year’s use at Qatar, in early December. The important thing is that all the new and existing teams will be at the November test, working to find the best solutions. Probably Yamaha France will be there as well.”

In closing, the question has been asked about why Pirelli would even want the staggering task of meeting all of the spec-tire rule’s requirements? Eddie Roberts, Pirelli’s World Racing Manager, answered the question at Laguna Seca: “The concept of production-based race tires interested Pirelli, because it would accelerate development of our consumer tires, and because at Pirelli, ‘We sell what we race, and we race what we sell.’ A road racer in the States can get these tires easily. We don’t hide them. We have no desire to hide them. We want everybody on them.”