BSB blog: Airwaves dominate but there’s a lot of racing yet in BSB

The Airwaves Yamaha  double 1-2 at Thruxton on Sunday underlined again how strong the team is this year – and how dominant Leon Camier has become and how well James Ellison is shaping up.

We shouldn’t be surprised how the team has helped turn Camier into a consistent winner and help Ellison achieve the kind of potential that he’s always promised. Look how they took Neil Hodgson and rebuilt his career, and James Toseland’s.

And how they took Troy Bayliss from a relatively obscurity and played a major role in creating his now legendary status.

Good financial backing helps, it buys the top staff, top riders and top equipment but what the team has achieved this year has been especially impressive and has been achieved by sheer experience rather than piles of money.

For a long time they had been dubbed one-trick ponies by certain rival teams because they bought ready-to-race Ducati factory bikes while other less-well financed rivals built their own race bikes from stock road bikes.

But this year, GSE quit the Ducati family and found themselves in the same boat as everyone else – building bikes from scratch.

And, for a while the ‘one trick pony’ moniker looked like it had a ring of truth to it when the team went into the first round without any testing.  Had they blown it? Of course not.

All the money and contact in the world didn’t help them when delays in delivery of full race parts meant they had to run virtually stock engines. Did they panic? Hell no.

They just got on with making the best of what they had and won three of the first four races – the softer engine spec not being too disadvantaged at Brands and Oulton.

But since their full race kit was installed for Donington they’ve not looked back. And now everyone is wondering if anyone can stop them running away with the championship.

But Colin Wright is one smart cookie. He knows that while one team might get a good run in the early races, their rivals will burn the midnight oil in a determined bid to fight back. As Wright says: that’s what racing is all about.

I’d be willing to put money on several riders giving Airwaves Yamaha  plenty to think about in the coming races.

“ut I’m not sure I’d bet against Camier taking the title. Not this early in the championship any way. C’mon, BSB might be plenty of things. Predictable it ain’t.