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Sidecar championship circuits

FIM Sidecar World Championship is the international sidecar racing championship. It is the only remaining original FIM road racing championship class that started in 1949. It was formerly named Superside when the sidecars moved from being part of Grand Prix Motorcycles racing to being support events for the Superbike World Championship. In 2010 the FIM took over the management of the series from the Superside promoters, and the championship was called "FIM Sidecar World Championship". However, the FIM still uses the word Superside for promotion purposes, despite the demise of the Superside promoters. The championship is raced over a number of rounds at circuits mainly in Europe, although other venues have been included in United States (Monterey), South Africa at Kyalami and Australia's Phillip Island.

When the sidecar world championships began in 1949, they were dominated by unambiguous, orthodox outfits where a sidecar was attached to a conventional solo motorcycle. Rigidity and strength were poorly understood and pre war machines have been described as "scaffolding on wheels". Development was based around cutting weight, providing a flat platform for the passenger, and reducing drag around the sidecar wheel and at the front of the sidecar platform. When developments in dolphin and dustbin fairings on solo machines proved successful at reducing drag, it was natural to adapt similar streamlined enclosures for the sidecar outfits. A pioneer in this area was Eric Oliver who worked with the Watsonian company on the development of successive experimental racing outfits including such innovations as the use of diameter wheels. The enclosure led to unfamiliar handling, and the advanced design was only used in practice for the Belgian Grand Prix and in the final Grand Prix at Monza, where it finished fourth in the hands of Jacques Drion and Inge Stoll. Throughout the year, other outfits experimented with more modest refinements such as additional braking via the sidecar wheel, sometimes linked to one or both of the other two brakes. Nevertheless, racing sidecars remained intrinsically the same to road going sidecars. A traditional racing outfit was a road going motorcycle outfit without the boot and with the suspension lowered. The bootless sidecar frame would have a flat platform. Both the battery and the fuel tank could be placed either between the motorcycle and the sidecar, or on the sidecar platform. Over time the subframe, struts, clamps, sidecar frame, etc. would merge with the motorcycle mainframe and form a single frame. But essentially the racing outfit was still a variant of the road going outfit in principle.

Between 1981 and 2016 Superside machines were known as Formula One sidecars using a basic unchanged design. These modern high tech machines are only related to motorcycles by the classification of the engines they use. All chassis are purpose built and owe more to open wheel race car technology and the tires are wide and have a flat profile. They are sometimes known as "worms". The most successful sidecar racer in Superside has been Steve Webster, who has won four world championships and six world cup between 1987 and 2004. The most successful chassis is LCR, the Swiss sidecar maker, whose founder Louis Christen has won 35 championships between 1979 and 2016, with a variety of engines, originally Yamaha and Krauser two strokes, more lately Suzuki four strokes. The BMW Rennsport RS54 Engine powered to 19 straight constructors titles from 1955 to 1973, the most by any engines. In 2014, for the first time a Kawasaki powered machine won the title with Tim Reeves and Gregory Cluze ending an 11 year consecutive Suzuki run. In 2016 Kirsi Kainulainen became the first woman motorcycle world champion, as passenger to Pekka Päivärinta. However, in 2017 the engine capacity of F1 sidecars was reduced from 1000cc to 600cc. This was a conscious effort by FIM to attract more participation from racers who still preferred the traditional F2 chassis. By reducing the engine size, it was hoped that this would mean competition on more equal terms. Nevertheless, the 2017 championship was still dominated by competitors using the F1 chassis. The highest placed F2 chassis team was 12th by Eckart Rösinger and Steffen Werner on their Baker Suzuki GSX R600.

Since 2005 there are now three types of race classes. Any given championship round can have all three type of races but sometimes there is only one type of race (the Gold Race) in one round, usually when the round is a supporting event of a major meeting such as MotoGP. Match Race. Teams are divided into groups and race in very short heat races. Winners and the better placing teams in these heats would advance to the next round (semi finals), until only the best six teams left for the final heat race. A typical heat race distance is three laps. Sprint Race. All teams participate in a short race. A typical race distance is twelve laps. Gold Race. All teams participate in a long race, usually twice the distance of the sprint race.