Was the 2014 WorldSBK title battle the best of the past decade?

The 2021 World Superbike Championship was arguably the best in recent WorldSBK history, but the 2014 title battle came down to even smaller margins.

While Toprak Razgatlioglu won the 2021 title having fought bar-to-bar with Jonathan Rea, who had come into 2021 off the back of six straight titles with Kawasaki, in almost every race that took place that year with one race to go, Sylvain Guintoli took a much more measured approach to winning the championship that ultimately led to his success in the final race of the season and by the slender margin of six points.

“Being World Champion in Superbike was my dream since I joined World Superbike,” Guintoli told WorldSBK.com.

“It was a lot of work, a lot of dedication. Managing to reach the title — especially in the last race, in the circumstances that it was, who wins the race wins the title, it was a great moment.”

The story of the 2014 season was not a straightforward one for Guintoli to navigate, as mistakes in the first part of the season left him 44 points behind Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes with three rounds, six races in the old two-race format, and 150 points remaining.

Guintoli explained that his championship was built on picking up all the points he could, even when he made mistakes.

“2014 was a difficult year,” he said. “I had some setbacks as well, crashes as well in the races sometimes, I crashed in the wet in Assen but remounted and managed to finish seventh in the end.

“I had another crash in the wet in Portimao with my teammate [Marco Melandri] at the time, and again remounted and scored some points.

“All of this, basically, added to winning the title, because I only won the title by six points.

“It was a fight all year long, and a question of not giving up, always getting back on and trying to score the points.

“So, the title was built on being consistent, making no mistakes, and especially at the end of the season because I was trailing Tom Sykes by quite a lot of points and I had to recover at the end of the season.

“So, the end of the year for me was really strong, and especially the last race in Qatar where I basically had to win both races to win the title, which I did.

“It was like maximum pressure, building up to that last race. Finally, when I did clinch the title, I did it with two race victories, so it was the perfect way to finish.”

Guintoli’s title was won in his second season with Aprilia, having replaced Max Biaggi in 2013 following the Italian’s retirement at the end of 2012.

“Those two years, 2013 and 2014, with Aprilia were fantastic,” Guintoli said.

“For me, it was the first time that I was a part of a full factory team. After all these years racing bikes in different championships, it was really the first time where I had a great chance of winning races and winning the championship — I was not an outsider anymore, I became someone that should be fighting for the title.

“So, the mentality changed there, and I was very much focused with this team, a great team of people, and we had a blast. It was two years where it was fantastic, the bike was competitive, and we worked together to achieve those results.

“It was a great feeling, and something that, even though I’d been racing for a long time, I’d never really had the opportunity to experience before. So, it took it all in, got the race wins, got the title, and got the job done.”