Last week, a fairly bold new set of rules for the beleaguered Superbike World Championship, aimed at reducing the cost of competing in the series and bolstering grid sizes, was announced for next season.
The most striking feature of these 2014 regulations is the fact that motorcycle manufacturers will be obliged to provide official equipment to all competitors at a fixed cost, effectively preventing them from favouring a single 'factory' team.
Though six manufacturers are represented on the 2013 grid in World Superbike, just three - Kawasaki, Aprilia and BMW - are full factory efforts, with Suzuki (Crescent), Ducati (Alstare) and Honda (Ten Kate) relying on favoured third-party outfits to run their bikes.
Even before the new rules were announced, BMW already confirmed their departure from the championship at the end of the season, leaving only Kawasaki and Aprilia in 2014 - that is, if they decide to continue competing under the new rules, which would all but eliminate the advantage of their respective factory teams.
Another major rule change for the 2014 World Superbike season is the introduction of a secondary 'EVO' class, which will cater for Superbikes conforming to more production-based engine and electronics regulations currently seen in the third-tier Superstock series.
Such a move is very reminiscent of MotoGP's decision to add the CRT class last year; this should come as little surprise after World Superbike fell under the control of the same commercial rights holder as MotoGP last year, the Spanish-based Dorna Sports organisation.
The CRT class served to blur what was hitherto a clear distinction between MotoGP and World Superbike - that the former was for prototypes, and the latter for production-derived machinery, a dividing line that gave World Superbike its raison d'être.
Now, Superbike engines from Kawasaki, BMW and Honda are to be found powering a range of different prototype chassis in the back half of the MotoGP grid. To confuse matters further, there are also a brace of machines that amount to little more than re-badged Aprilia Superbikes dominating the CRT class.
Even the most casual observer would have no problem in spotting the remarkable similarities between this CRT bike, entered under the 'Aprilia Racing Technologies' banner, and the Aprilia RSV4 World Superbike.
What's more, proprietary electronic software, which is said to be key to the success of the Aspar-run ART machines relative to their CRT competitors, is to be banned in the CRT class (or the 'non-factory' class, as it is to become known) next year in favour of spec software written by Magneti Marelli.
That means, that if Aprilia wants to continue to use its own software, it must become a full factory team and take on the might of Honda, Yamaha and Ducati. That in turn means conforming to a rigourous 20-litre fuel limit, an enormous barrier to entry that the 'big three' manufacturers are in no mood to see removed.
Whether Aprilia has the resources to overcome this obstacle isn't clear. But, the new rules that have been announced for World Superbike must make taking on the challenge of MotoGP a more attractive proposition than it may have been otherwise.
That potentially leaves Kawasaki as the only remaining works operation on the World Superbike grid, and it would surely be a matter of time before they also departed with the marketing value of competing in the championship significantly diminished by the presence of only one full manufacturer entry.
Thus, it seems World Superbike is in the midst of an identity crisis. It's probable that, after several seasons of trialing 'EVO' bikes, the two classes will meet somewhere in the middle, leaving a fairly tightly-packed grid made up of independent teams with limited factory support.
That would surely signify the end of the two premier motorcycle racing championships trying to compete with one another, which would be the only logical outcome given that World Superbike and MotoGP are now under the control of a single commercial rights holder.
Instead of pretending to be the pinnacle, World Superbike would be able to market itself as an alternative route for riders reach MotoGP, one where young talents can test their skills against those who have already been there and done it.
This make sense, as ever since Grand Prix Racing adopted four-stroke bikes back in 2002, World Superbike has constantly suffered from its best riders leaking away to MotoGP.
The high-water mark for World Superbike was arguably the 2002 season, which witnessed an epic duel for supremacy between Troy Bayliss and Colin Edwards. The following year, both men made the leap to MotoGP.
World Superbike has struggled to scale such heights since, and the past decade has seen three more of its champions - Neil Hodgson, James Toseland and Ben Spies - switch to MotoGP. With several Grand Prix riders going in the opposite direction, most notably Max Biaggi and Carlos Checa, World Superbike came to be defined by its relationship to MotoGP rather than by its own merits.
There simply are not enough financial resources available to make both MotoGP and World Superbike global successes, meaning that the latter is going to have play second fiddle now it is under the Dorna Sports umbrella. That doesn't mean that World Superbike can't enjoy a healthy future, though.
A combination of up-and-coming talents and past MotoGP masters competing on less expensive, more production-based machinery would be make a thoroughly entertaining spectacle. Dorna should therefore leave the elite riders and full factory entrants to MotoGP, and allow World Superbike to evolve into its perfect compliment.
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