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The World Superbike calendar has been reduced to 13 events. The Russian round of WSBK, scheduled to be held at the Moscow Raceway on July 5th has been canceled, after the event organizer, YMS Promotion, failed to provide the contract guarantees required by the contract.

As a further consequence, the Yakhnich Motorsport Team have also lost their slot on the 2015 World Supersport grid, which was tied in with the Russian round.

The cancellation of the Russian round did not come as a surprise. The Russian WSBK round is a legacy of the last years of Infront running the series.

Rather perversely, a lot of the talk at the World Superbike test at Jerez has not been about World Superbikes at all. Which is a shame, as the 2015 World Superbike championship promises to be particularly fascinating, with testing times very close indeed.

Instead, there was a real kerfuffle about the slowest bike on the track, the one being ridden by Kenny Noyes and Dominique Aegerter.

The cause of the fuss? The fact that it was a Kawasaki, a further development of the Open class bike raced by the Avintia Racing team in MotoGP last year, has generated a mountain of speculation that Team Green is preparing a comeback to MotoGP, bringing all four major Japanese factories back into the premier class.

The truth was a good deal more prosaic.

One of the more surprising things to come from MV Agusta USA’s price sheet for its 2015 models is the confirmation of the MV Agusta F4 RC superbike — a bike that had been leaked ahead of the 2014 EICMA show.

MV Agusta hasn’t publicly released details on the F4 RC yet, though leaked information points to a homologation special styled superbike with over 200hp.

Expected to cost €40,000 in the European market (the price cap for WSBK racing machines), American enthusiasts will enjoy the MV Agusta F4 RC’s $46,000 price tag in the United States.

At the last meeting of the Superbike Commission, the body which makes the rules for the World Superbike series, representatives of Dorna, the FIM and the factories agreed a number of measures which provide yet another step on the path to the future of the series.

There were a couple of minor technical updates, and two changes which point the way to the series’ long term future.

The changes to the technical regulations were relatively simple. The balancing rules, aimed at allowing different engine designs to be competitive against each other, received a number of minor tweaks resulting from the fact that those rules will now be carried on from one season to the next.

In practice, this means that results for either twins or fours will be carried over between seasons, creating a rolling balancing scoreboard, which should create a better balance between fours and twins.

The other change to the technical rules allow a manufacturer to revert to their 2014 electronics for the first two races of 2015, should the 2015 electronics cause them problems.

Basically, this will give the teams a fallback position and give them a little more time to develop the electronics. As the first two rounds are in Australia and Thailand, the risk of struggling with a system which is not completely ready to race during a period when it is impossible to test has been reduced.

The changes to the sporting regulations are more interesting, and point the way to the future of the series.

Are you still racking your brain over what to get that special motorcyclist in your life for Christmas (or Chanukah, for our Jewish readers)? Was the Paul Bird Motorsports MotoGP race bikes that are for sale a bit too spendy for your holiday budget?

Then we have a more budget friend proposition for you: the Bimota BB3 WSBK-Spec race bikes that were raced by Team Alstare in the 2014 World Superbike Championship.

Marc Marquez has ended the year on a win, beating the reigning AMA Flat Track champion Jared Mees in a thrilling final. The two men got caught up in traffic when Thomas Chareyre, who got the jump at the start, forced them wide.

That gave the lead to Kenny Noyes and Gerard Ribalta, but Marquez and Mees soon chased the two down, passing Bailo with ease, Noyes with difficulty. Marquez had gained enough of a cushion to keep Mees at bay, finally getting revenge for his loss to Brad Baker in January this year, at the inaugural event.

Noyes went on to score a respectable 3rd, ahead of Bailo and Ribalta. The 16-year-old British rider Oliver Brindley gave an outstanding account of himself, finishing in 6th, ahead of Bradley Smith, who got caught up in the first lap incident, and Chareyre, who caused it.

Saturday night is the last chance to see the stars of motorcycle racing turning a wheel in anger.

On 13th December, the cream of both the MotoGP and AMA flat track paddocks meet for the second running of the Superprestigio, an indoor invitation dirt track race, at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona.

The setting is a classic location: the Palau Sant Jordi is part of the former Olympic park, set atop Montjuic, scene of many legendary motorcycle races of the past.

For those who could not make it to Barcelona themselves, they need not despair. The event is to be broadcast in several countries around the globe, as well as streamed live online.

Despite an abysmal year in the World Superbike Championship last season, Team Hero EBR will return to the WSBK paddock for 2015. The team’s return is perhaps in name only, as major changes have been made to EBR’s WSBK presence, which will continue to be based out of Italy.

Most notable is Team Hero EBR’s new riders — Larry Pegram and Niccolo Canepa — with Pegram having double-duties, as he will act as the Team Manager in charge of the Pegram Racing crew, which will take over running the Team Hero EBR program.

Good news for females riders in the European Union, as we hear that the FIM Women’s European Cup has been folded into the European Junior Cup, which runs alongside the World Superbike Championship.

Running alongside the EJC as its own class, young female riders won’t have to decide between the two series, as they will score points in both. This relieves young ladies from having to choose between racing with just the girls, or the boys on an equal playing field…as now they will be doing both.