To all intents and purposes, it looked like Supersport racing at British and world level was dead and buried as almost all manufacturers stopped producing new ones as sales had slumped over the past couple of years.

Only Yamaha has produced a new one and - not surprisingly - it is basically cleaning up in WorldSSP while Jack Kennedy is leading the Dickies British Supersport series by 14 points on a 2018 R6.

But, according to WorldSBK boss Daniel Carrera, all is not lost for the middleweight class as the south Asian market is beginning to show interest in buying bigger bikes than their current favourite 400s.

“Last year, they the manufacturers were having the strategy to stop 600. Why? Because of the European market. They were thinking that they were not in the position to continue going because of the customers, who were losing the will to buy 600s,” Carrera told bikesportnews.com.

“But with the conversations we had last month with them the strategy could be changed because they think it could come faster that the customers in Asia start to want this machinery.

“So now we are waiting a little, because until 2020 we have time because we have 600s homologated by the FIM, so we can run. So we need to see until the end of the year if they change their strategy and they would like to continue producing those models in the future. This will give stability to the category.

“If not we have other alternatives. We want to see if we can find a weight-power ratio that other models in the market can enter and then try to find technical regulations for a new category in the middle class.”

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