Rutter: One BSB season. Five different bikes

Michael Rutter finally achieved something few of his rivals would never wish to contemplate – riding every make of machine in one season of BSB.
Rutter pulled the dustsheets off the Ducati he rode all through the 2008 season to run it at Silverstone having previously ridden Yamaha, Suzuki Honda and Kawasaki machinery.

But it was no fairy tale return. The flywheel of his 2008 BSB-spec engine fell off before it even left the pit garage and his supposedly freshly-rebuilt 2008-spec WSB engine also failed with just 250kms on the clock even though the engines are ‘lifed’ at 1000kms.

He eventually managed to finish 15th in the second race but now he has the bugs ironed out he’s hoping for a much stronger showing at Oulton on October 11. 
In the meantime, we asked Rutter to give his impressions of each of the five bikes:

NW200 Yamaha (Brands and Donington)
There’s nothing wrong with the R1 as Airwaves have shown. But our bike had too much power at Brands and lost the nice drive off the corners we had in testing. Plus I knew from experience – three man teams never work.  I wanted out from the start but had to keep going until the NW200. They’ve since got the bike going better – I’m surprised how good and GSE Racing can say what they like with £1.5million to play with but when you’ve got a budget of £150,000 things are different.

Worx Suzuki (Thruxton, Snetterton, Knockhill)
It’s a good team, good bike. The only issue I had was the electronics pushing the bike into the corners. I kept my head down in the first meeting but in the second one, it held me back. The harder you tired to ride it, the slower you went. Guintoli seems to have no issues but I know Tommy complained about the same thing as me.

SMT Honda (Mallory)
That bike could finish top three in BSB. It’s a nice team with a good bike.  The forks tended to bottom out because they weren’t valved  right. If they had got that done it would be a top three bike.

MSS Kawasaki (Brands)
I really wasn’t looking forward to riding it. I just kept thinking back to 2007. But Nick Morgan asked me to help them out. But what a bike! Out of the crate it was so good. I rode the Marelli bike but we had a valve problem so I had to run the kit bike in the races. It was even better. Turns, steers. With a little more budget to push the engine further it would be so good. If I run my own team in 2010, Kawasaki would be the best option.

Bathams Brewery Ducati (Silverstone)
My god. First few laps the thing gave me a headache. It felt horrible but then the faster I went the better it felt. I was looking forward to a good result but then we hit a load of problems.  We thought we had a freshly-built engine but it stopped working. Things had done too much mileage and really messed up what had the promise of a good weekend.