With the announcements over the past couple of weeks from Honda, Yamaha and Ducati, it certainly looks like the World Superbike series is making an astounding comeback from last year’s stories of doom and gloom.

First, Honda announces that both Ben Bostrom and Frankie Chili have found rides with factory supported teams for next year. Yamaha has officially announced Norikuki Haga (as rumored for the past month or so) will be on their factory superbike team and also announced that ex-GP star Norick Abe will be racing in WSBK on a factory supported team. Then, to make things better, NCR Ducati announced today that ex-250 GP star Fonsi Nieto will riding one of their superbikes.

Not only are the Japanese factories making a splash by returning to World Superbike competition but MV Agusta is rumored to be running a factory supported team in 2005. Its not too far a stretch to think that Aprilia may return as well, if not this year than next, now that they have pulled out of MotoGP.

I didn’t include Abe or Nieto in my 2005 WSBK Line-up posting and I think both of them will be a good addition to the series. Abe struggled with the four strokes in MotoGP but to run mid-pack in that star-studded field still shows amazing talent. If the Yamaha is a strong bike, I think Abe will run with Haga which means near the front and that will add big excitement. I don’t think that Nieto will prove so promising based on the depth of the WSBK field, the performance of the NCR Ducati and Fonsi’s inconsistent performance in the past two seasons 250GP. What Nieto does bring is MotoGP levels of sponsorship which will be great for the series.

[image from the Motorcycle USA web site]