Words With P.J. Jacobsen: “It's Time To Move Up To Superbike ...”

Preseason testing marked P.J. Jacobsen as one of the favorites to take the Supersport World Championship in 2017. But in hindsight, the Phillip Island round may have been a harbinger of things to come. Undeniably fast, Jacobsen's season has not gone to plan.

In a wide-ranging conversation in the paddock at Lausitzring in Germany, Jacobsen reflected on his career, his season to date, and his desire to move into the premier class of the series.

"It's been up and down. It started off pretty good at Phillip Island, with the testing and all, and a silly mistake from myself. I should have had a win. Truthfully, I feel bad, it was an easy win,” Jacobsen says.

“I've had a lot of pole positions this year. On the down side, we've had a couple of DNFs which have affected us in the Championship. It's just been up and down. The team's trying really hard. I'm working really hard. It's a new bike for me. But also new teams have come in and stepped up the level a bit. So it's right now a bit hard to compete. But I'm trying to do my best, keep pushing, and Sunday's what counts. We keep trying to get as many points and keep the flow going and try to click off podiums."

Jacobsen broke through in 2015 after his team collapsed mid-season. The New Yorker jumped onto a different team, immediately put his Honda CBR600RR onto the podium first race out and ran off two wins and two more seconds to close out the season second in the Championship. It was an amazing accomplishment after an insane season, and much was expected in 2016, especially after Jacobsen joined the immensely successful Ten Kate team.

But 2016 was a struggle, and four podiums were not the results Jacobsen expected. Jumping to the factory-backed MV Agusta squad to race its F3 675 seemed like an excellent move, as competitive as the MV had been in 2016.

The landscape for 2017 has changed, however. Yamaha, eager to demonstrate the superiority of its new YZF-R6, hired the reigning Endurance World Champion and a host of other supremely talented riders and put them on full factory-backed bikes.

"In the past couple of years, it's been me, Jules (Cluzel) and Kenan (Sofuoglu, the five-time and defending Supersport World Champion). Since the new teams and other riders have come in, and the new YZF-R6 has come out, I think it's had a big impact on the class," Jacobsen says. "It's a very good bike. Everyone knows that it's a really good bike. I was teammates with a couple of riders who are in front of me in the championship, and um ... It's hard to race against them right now. It's a very competitive bike."

And Jacobsen has had to adapt, after a year and a half on the Honda, to the demands of the MV Agusta.

"You have ride them differently. The Honda's a more aggressive bike to ride,” he says. “The MV is more like a 250 GP bike - you have to be more relaxed on the bike, real corner speed and flow, not so aggressive with the bike. I notice that when I get more aggressive with the bike I start going backward with my lap times. You relax more, the lap times come easily."

Jacobsen has raced literbikes in the Endurance World Championship, and has impressed. He's happy with his riding style on the bigger machines, and is looking to move up to Superbike.

“I'm not here to just make up the numbers. I've been four years in the Supersport class. I'm trying to move up to Superbike. Obviously, you need to be challenging for the Championship to move up,” Jacobsen says. “I've been second in the Championship before. Last year didn't quite go as planned. Hopefully this year I can continue to show people I can move up. The ultimate goal is to be in Superbike and ride in front of American fans. I think it would be cool to be up there one day.

"I'm getting older - I'm 24 now - and I've been in the class four years. The class has changed so much, with different rules, and 600s aren't such a big thing right now, as manufacturers seem like they're not focusing on it right now. Yamaha is, but ... I don't know. A lot of things are changing, I'm getting older, and it's time to move up to Superbike.”

Jacobsen was among the front-runners every time he got on the Endurance bike, demonstrating that he could race literbikes and do it well. In the past, Jacobsen has raced for a front-line Superbike team in the British Superbike series and has won in Superstock 1000 in that series.

"I rode for Honda in Suzuka and I did very well there. I came from British Superbike. I like the Superbike. I like riding the Superbike better, and I think I ride it better,” Jacobsen says. "Every time I did an endurance race we were in the podium positions, and we always had a mechanical. I was the fastest Honda rider in Suzuka last year, and we were always in the top three - we just needed the bike to last."

With MV Agusta reportedly considering adding a second bike to its one-rider Superbike effort, a move up to the premier class and the manufacturer's F4 1000 would seem to be a natural step for Jacobsen. He's interested, but there has been nothing settled.

"I'd like to stay with a manufacturer and be loyal. That's one thing I believe in. Hopefully they have a Superbike spot open,” Jacobsen says.

In Praise Of Elias, Or It's Not Easy To Tame A Tiger

It is fashionable to cite the success of Toni Elias as proof of the dearth of talent in U.S. road racing. The mantra goes that Elias, a washed-up has-been, showed up on a MotoAmerica Superbike ride for Yoshimura Suzuki and casually beat the best of the U.S.

Toni Elias, MotoAmerica preseason testing, Circuit of the Americas, 2017.

This assessment is based on a short-sighted view of history and a lack of understanding as to how the business of racing works. Fact is that beating Toni on any given day is a challenge for anyone, not just in the U.S. but anywhere in the world.

Elias' speed is indisputable. Not only is he one of the few racers to beat a top-of-his-form Valentino Rossi, but he did so on a satellite machine. And Elias adapted to the new Moto2 series quickly, winning the first championship in that category. Speed is not the question.

Elias' reputation took a serious hit the following year when he went to MotoGP. Faced with the entirely different Bridgestone MotoGP tire after a season on the Moto2 spec Dunlop, Elias struggled to make the tires work. On his best days, he was mid-pack. On his worst, he was like Dani Pedrosa trying to get heat into the current spec Michelins - the tires simply gave him no grip, no feedback, and he struggled to get into the top 10. 

Switching back to Moto2 didn't help, and the underdeveloped Honda production MotoGP racer wasn't any friendlier. In racing, all you have are the results from last season, and Elias' results were literally nothing you wanted on your resume, especially given the heights he had ascended to. The top-level machinery that gets you wins simply wasn't made available to him.

In addition, Elias is a professional, with more than a decade of GP experience. In the post-economic-meltdown world, there were a lot of teams who could overlook Elias' speed, experience and talent and opt for a racer who would bring cash and sponsorship, rather than demand a paycheck. After earning a living doing something, it's hard to do it for free. It's a harsh-but-true estimate that on most grids, a third of the riders are getting paid, a third are doing it for free, and a third are paying for the privilege of racing. With no offers of paid rides, Elias sat, in his words, watching racing from the couch.

Many mistook this as European teams dismissing Elias' skills. Not true. They were dismissing his demands to be paid as a professional, compared to the extra value he could bring. Could Elias have scored mid-field or top 10 results in Moto2? Certainly. But why pay a rider for a 10th-place finish if you can have a rider bring the team money and finish 15th?

When Yoshimura Suzuki called, Elias was motivated. Yoshimura was a paying gig. Elias rewarded them with wins right off the bat on one of the oldest machines on the MotoAmerica grid - although, it must be said, a very well-sorted motor racing bike!

And that led to the 2017 season, with a very motivated Elias riding a brand-new GSX-R1000 that Suzuki had tested extensively in the off-season. Elias and teammate Roger Hayden both were more competitive than they had been, and Elias in particular gelled with the machine. Elias pushed hard; note the scuffed left hip of the leathers in the picture above. Elias dug deep into his well of experience and skill to earn the results he did.

The fact that Elias is the 2017 MotoAmerica Superbike champion isn't a damning indictment of the talent in the U.S. Rather, it could be viewed as the opposite. It took a rider who could win at the MotoGP level to defeat the U.S. riders, and even Elias had to push as hard as he could to make it happen.

Factory Proximity

Dan Linfoot, Honda Racing British Superbike Team, Druids Hairpin, British Superbikes, 2017. The flames erupting from the exhaust aren't just spectacular to look at. They hint at something deeper, something that is relevant to the very core of professional racing.


Linfoot, like most other professional racers on the new 2017 Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade, had struggled, with little in the way of help coming from Japan. At this round, he qualified third, led Race One and took his first podium of the season.

After the qualifying news conference, we spoke about a comment he'd made - that he'd gone to Japan to ride the Honda Fireblade put together by Moriwaki Motul Racing for the Suzuka 8 Hours. Linfoot had just gotten back from testing the bike, and he said he'd tried to get his team to make the BSB bike react like the Suzuka bike.

Linfoot said what he got most from the Suzuka test was a feeling that he wanted replicated in the BSB machine. Specifically, he wanted a smoother, more direct response to the throttle, which would make it easier for him to dial in the power and get out of turns more quickly. It is an axiom of racing of any sort: The pilota who gets on the power earliest wins.

"I told the team, the feel of the Suzuka bike - that's what I want this bike to feel like," Linfoot said.

The flame coming from the exhaust could be an indication that the team, unable to use electronics to dial in throttle response, had resorted to some old-time tuning techniques like richening the mixture to avoid lean on-off throttle response. It's crude and inefficient, but when you're banned from using more sophisticated techniques, you use what you've got.

Linfoot isn't the only Superbike rider who went to Japan and came back impressed by the machinery they rode, even though in some cases the spec of the Suzuka 8 Hours bikes were nearly identical to the spec of the machine they rode in series like World Superbike.

It is the phenomenon of Factory Proximity. Not all the information the factory knows leaves the building, the series or sometimes the country. As one BSB racer told me, "If Honda wanted to win World Superbike, they'd be winning World Superbike." Obviously, what Honda knows about making the new Fireblade competitive isn't transferring to Europe. 

Linfoot made it clear that the Honda at Suzuka was a much better machine. Alex Lowes liked the Suzuka 8 Hours Yamaha far better than his WorldSBK machine.

It is one of the fascinating subplots of racing, that information goes as far as it needs to go to achieve a company's greater goals. And winning at all costs isn't always the goal. To get that information, that data, that first-hand experience with the front-line weapon, the closer you get to the factory, the better.