WorldSBK 2020: Whitham discusses title favourites

Making a welcome return to Eurosport in 2020, James Whitham will be the voice of wisdom when WorldSBK returns to Motorland Aragon this weekend and before flying out to Alcaniz, he sat down with bikesportnews.com to chew over the year ahead:

BSN: Although the publicity from Dorna suggests this this year will be much better than last year it seems like a two-horse race as the two best riders, Toprak and Jonathan, are on the two best bikes, Kawasaki and Yamaha, and it’s not going to be easy for Honda or BMW to get past them, is it?

JW: There’s some truth in that and the two favourites are going to be just those two. The good thing about it is that Jonathan has a plan and he impressed me quite a lot when we recently had breakfast together when he came over to see some friends in England and called in to see Lee Johnston.

He is not too upset with the championship that he lost last year. He said ‘I want to fight, I don’t want to win what people see as a one-horse race. I want to have a scrap and am quite prepared to roll my sleeves up and am looking forward to having another crack after addressing some of the problems which I think we had.’

He was very determined, looking forward to battles with Toprak and racing that was competitive. He recognises that he has to get better with the front end and go some way to matching Toprak in that area.

So, there is a hint of truth in what you’re saying that they are the two favourites. But I don’t think you can underestimate Alvaro Bautista who before has been what you might call the flawed genius. He led the 2019 series by, I think, something like 115 points and still Jonathan wrested it from him in the end. But it looks like, maybe, he has rekindled his love affair with the V4 Ducati