Wattie wrote:superbikes were 750 4cyl, then they allowed less modified 1000cc 4s, and thats the way roadbikes went.
Ummm, what are you talking about?
Honda never really had a modern, mainstream 750cc sportsbike.
Yamaha dropped their last effort, the YZF750R, from their lineup for the 1997 model year.
The ZX-7R went unchanged since 1996, and even when it first appeared, it was only a refinement of what went before it, not a fresh design.
MV Agusta tried it, then gave up and made the block and cases bigger so their bike could also be 1000cc.
Suzuki are the only ones really persisting with a 750, and even that went through a grim phase around the turn of the century when hardly anyone was buying it.
WSB didn't change the formula to include 1000cc fours because the manufacturers wanted to build and sell more advanced litre bikes; it's because the bikes which were being raced became irrelevant to the street.
When WSB started, in 1988, a litre bike was an FZR1000 or an original ZX-10; too big and too heavy to be sportsbikes. Sports riders rode 750's, so that's what they designed the new race series to reflect.
As manufacturers learned to lop weight off their bikes, and things like the FireBlade, the R1 and the C-model ZX9 came out, people stopped bothering with 750's, and WSB suffered as a result.
In 2000, Frankie Chili raced the WT-shaped GSX-R750, when the Eaglebeak was already out. Why go watch racing when there's a superseded bike in the field? Pffft.
the ducati desmosedici is now available for like 100k which is great value
and why did they release it? to race a bike in superbikes it needs to be homolagated (released to the public) so Ducati release it moto gp replica, rich ppl buy it, its now homolagated, hey presto, its now allowed to run in Superbikes....
Wrong.
Ducati are still in business only because the 916 you could buy in the mid 90's looked and sounded just like the bike on which Fogarty and Corser were doing the business in WSB.
They haven't forgotten that... and they've learned from Yamaha and Honda's experiences with megabuck cul-de-sac homologation models. Nobody bought a FireBlade because of the RC45, and nobody bought an R1 because of Haga getting the R7 sideways. If anything, part of the reason WSB went to 1000cc fours is because the Japanese manufacturers wanted to race what they sell.
In a nutshell, MotoGP builds brand awareness, WSB builds awareness of individual models. The former sells T-shirts, the latter sells whole bikes. In which of the two do you figure is there more money to be made?