FGSport and Alfa Romeo have announced the creation of the Alfa 159 Superpole Award in the 2008 HANNspree Superbike World Championship, starting from this weekend's opening round in Qatar.

FGSport and Alfa Romeo wish to announce the creation of the Alfa 159 Superpole Award in the 2008 HANNspree Superbike World Championship, starting from this weekend's opening round in Qatar.

The prize, an Alfa Romeo 159 3.2 Sportwagon Ti, will be awarded at the end of the season to the rider in the Superbike World Championship who has totalled the highest number of Superpoles. In case two or more riders total the same number of Superpoles, the highest number of second places will determine the eventual winner of the award, and so on.

The 2008 HANNspree Superbike World Championship is getting underway this weekend with the opening round in Qatar, the first in a scheduled 14-race calendar. The 2008 season will be the twenty-first of the championship, which began back at Donington, UK in 1988.

All the leading challengers in last year's thrilling championship – Noriyuki Haga, Max Biaggi, Troy Bayliss, Troy Corser, Ruben Xaus – are back again this year and they are being joined by a healthy influx of competitive riders from other series to make up an impressive grid of 28 permanent riders.

After the final days of unofficial pre-season testing for some of the top teams in World Superbike, the stopwatches demonstrated that a few well-known names in World Superbike will be the toughest to beat when the season starts. Not all riders were on track on all the Qatar test days last week however, and some of the other teams in the series had chosen to stay in Europe for their final tests.