Gardner P5 in Friday Practice at Balaton

Sam Lowes pushes Razgatlioglu out of top spot as Bulega struggles at new Hungarian track

Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team Ducati) continued his good 2025 season body of work with the fastest day one lap time at the all-new Balaton Park circuit in Hungary. His 1’39.528 best on his independent Ducati was 0.215 seconds faster than Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team).

The Turkish rider said that he had some brake issues – with the lever pushing back on his fingers on the handlebar – despite showing his usual extravagant hard-braking style into some of the many slow corners and chicanes around the flat and tight Balaton circuit.

Andrea Iannone (Team Pata GoEleven Ducati) was third fastest on Friday, albeit almost four tenths of a second from Razgatlioglu; over 0.6 seconds from Lowes.

At a circuit most of the top riders had ridden at before, albeit on their training bikes, this first day of full WorldSBK on full WorldSBK spec machines saw some upsets to the usual 2025 norms.

Iker Lecuona (Honda HRC) was fourth fastest, Remy Gardner (GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team) placed fifth, with Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) rounding out day one in sixth place.

Declared fit to race after his big Donington crash, Alex Lowes (bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team) was seventh. He was one place ahead of championship contender, Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati).

The top ten in Friday’s combined timesheets saw Danilo Petrucci (Barni Spark Racing Team Ducati) ninth and Ryan Vickers (MotoCorsa Racing Ducati) a strong tenth.

P1 – Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team)
“I’m really happy to be here in Hungary and I really enjoyed the track. We rode here on a training bike recently but it’s always different when you ride the Superbike. Overall, it was a positive day. FP2 was a lot hotter but I still had a good feeling. In the morning I was able to maintain consistent lap times and in FP2 I started the session with a longer run. The lap time improvement came more from putting in a new tyre at the end rather than pushing harder. I improved in Sector 2 during the day but I still need to improve in Sector 4. I need to fine-tune my braking marker into the last chicane. Overall, it’s a really nice track and it’s quite complex. There are a lot of places where you can make or lose time.”

P2 – Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team)
“The feeling is good because this is a new track and we have started strongly. We did a very good race simulation and our pace looks strong. The track suits my style, especially for hard braking. We tried one tyre but didn’t have time to test the other one so we still need to understand which is better. It will be important to choose the right tyre for the race. This is a very important race, I want to win here. My big target is the hat-trick again. We’ve started well, and if we keep improving the bike, I think we can get even stronger.”

P3 – Andrea Iannone (Team Pata GoEleven)
“I think we have good potential. We were able to do some important work in the afternoon session. I believe we can still improve in some areas with some small steps. I tried to explain clearly to the team what I needed. It’s not about being too stressed or doing anything dramatic. Honestly, this is one of our best Fridays of the year, which is important for us because we’ve struggled a lot this year on Friday’s. We’ve started to recover the feeling and put things together in the right way. Today was a good start and that’s really encouraging.”

P5 – Remy Gardner (GYTR GTR Yamaha)
”Overall, the final position is encouraging, but we still need to keep working on our race pace to be competitive in Race 1. I’m confident we can achieve that, and it’ll also be important to put in a strong flying lap tomorrow in the Tissot Superpole. Saturday will be key, but I think we’re on the right path. I quite like the layout of the new track, so let’s stay focused and build a strong weekend.”

P8 – Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati)
“Honestly, I didn’t have a great feeling with the bike today. We struggled a bit, especially in the braking areas, and this layout has a lot of heavy braking zones. So we need to adjust the settings for tomorrow and try something different. I think if we improve the braking, the rest will follow. That’s the main goal for tomorrow: improve in that area and then we’ll see.”

2025 Balaton WorldSBK Friday Practice