Here is the 2012 Provisional SBK Entry List.  Check Hopper #18 on a Gix!!!  Nice!!!!     Biaggi still kicking...
Chaz is up but notice someone is missing...  Who is it?


1 3 Max Biaggi ITA Aprilia RSV4 1000 F Aprilia Racing Team
2 58 Eugene Laverty IRL Aprilia RSV4 1000 F Aprilia Racing Team
3 7 Carlos Checa ESP Ducati 1098R Althea Racing
4 34 Davide Giugliano ITA Ducati 1098R Althea Racing
5 50 Sylvain Guintoli FRA Ducati 1098R Team Effenbert Liberty Racing
6 96 Jakub Smrz CZE Ducati 1098R Team Effenbert Liberty Racing
7 33 Marco Melandri ITA BMW S1000 RR BMW Motorrad Motorsport
8 91 Leon Haslam GBR BMW S1000 RR BMW Motorrad Motorsport
9 4 Hiroshi Aoyama JPN Honda CBR1000RR Honda World Superbike Team
10 65 Jonathan Rea GBR Honda CBR1000RR Honda World Superbike Team
11 84 Michel Fabrizio ITA BMW S1000 RR BMW Motorrad Italia GOLDBET SBK Team
12 86 Ayrton Badovini ITA BMW S1000 RR BMW Motorrad Italia GOLDBET SBK Team
13 78 Lorenzo Zanetti ITA Ducati 1098R PATA Racing Team
14 17 Joan Lascorz ESP Kawasaki ZX-10R Kawasaki Racing Team
15 66 Tom Sykes GBR Kawasaki ZX-10R Kawasaki Racing Team
16 36 Leandro Mercado ARG Kawasaki ZX-10R Team Pedercini
17 44 David Salom ESP Kawasaki ZX-10R Team Pedercini
18 21 John Hopkins USA Suzuki GSX-R1000 Crescent Suzuki
19 Leon Camier GBR Suzuki GSX-R1000 Crescent Suzuki
20 Mark Aitchison AUS BMW S1000 RR Grillini Progea Superbike Team
21 121 Maxime Berger FRA Ducati 1098R Liberty Racing - Team Effenbert
22 19 Chaz Davies GBR Aprilia RSV4 1000 F ParkinGO Aprilia Racing Team
23 35 Raffaele De Rosa ITA Honda CBR1000RR Pro Ride Motorsports

24 59 Niccolò Canepa ITA Ducati 1098R Team Ducati Roma

Edited by user Saturday, January 21, 2012 8:19:39 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

This is all I have on Haga..

There's nothing wrong with a good rumour, especially if you've started it yourself and it rips around race paddocks faster than Jonathan Palmer gets through whatever it is helicopters run on. Dodo sperm or something.

The best one yet this year is that World Superbike exile Noriyuki Haga will make a return to BSB in 2012 and has been 'in talks with a Ducati team', so says one alleged insider. So far as I can make out, there is a remote chance the Samurai of Slide could be at Brands over Easter weekend and in competition but you have to question his motivation.

Haga will have to take a massive pay cut to be here - like 75 per cent. He will be forced to move from a country that has a lovely climate to somewhere that just features weather and then there's the food. He is used to Italian cuisine. That, for me, would be the third strike.

You also have to look at whether it is a good move for the series. When Yukio Kagayama returned to BSB it looked like he really couldn't be arsed, so was shipped back to the Land of the Rising Sun fairly sharpish afterwards. Atsushi Watanabe never liked it here and Ryuichi Kiyonari eventually threw in the towel, although for myriad different reasons.

Series director Stuart Higgs would be a brave man to sanction the entry of a rider who would have so much expected of him by the paying public but may not be able to deliver. It's a formula with no traction control. A Haga of ten years ago would have relished that but now, as he passes middle thirties, can he be bothered to re-learn, or indeed unlearn, how to ride a Superbike?

It would be better for Nitro Nori to follow Troy Corser into retirement and be remembered for that R7 slide into Clearways back when all this was fields instead of what could be the most terrible of swansongs. Unless, of course, he really, really needs the money...