Ducati’s privateer package is back but the Bimotas are coming for them
One round down and 11 to go, WorldSBK has already entered something of a new era for production-derived racing. As far as the Superbike and WorldSSP classes are concerned, we have now had the evidence of winter testing, followed by the unreal and yet entirely concrete race results from Round One at Phillip Island. Since then, even more European testing has been carried out, at Portimao. It was yet another near washout on the two planned Portimao days of 9-10 March. Some teams impatiently waited onsite for three more days, just to finally test again on Friday the 13th. In the perfect conditions? It was worth the extra budget and effort.
Winter testing – how and where and when – is a hot topic right now, paradoxically inflamed by endless cooling rains. The teams seem ready to rebel so they can be allowed to test at tracks near reliably dry deserts or jungles in the winter months, just like the old days.
Our new 2026 eras fall into many categories, including a whole new racing class of World Sportbike (WSPB). It’s new to the WorldSBK paddock at least, and will be getting underway after a special test session (alongside the all-female WorldWCR championship) a few days before the second round gets going for real.
Back to the bigger classes. Even though Phillip Island throws up some weird results each year, and with virtually no pre-Island winter testing to speak of on their new bikes, Ducati riders filled six of the top seven championship positions leaving Australia.
Any great significance? Or just Island weirdness?
Well, it’s worth noting for posterity that Ducati has now really gone back to its former status as not only the most effective dance partner for riders and teams of all kinds, but the clear choice for those ‘privateers’ with serious podium ambitions. With a new model for all to buy this year, Ducati is reaping some of the budget it has sown far and wide during its Vee-Four era.
It actually feels like déjà vu for the Vs all over again, for the business side of Bologna at least.
Why déjà vu? From the times of the Ducati 888s, you could buy a race-prepped V-twin direct from Ducati Corse, get the right guys in the workshop back home to keep ‘em proper, and WSBK podiums were more than achievable with a good enough rider.
If my creaking old memory serves me right, you had to pay around 125,000 Euros for a prepped 916-era race bike and maybe 25-30k for an engine. In 2026, if you buy a brand-new full WSBK V4-R straight from Ducati Corse (which comes with some additional support but no exhaust system), it will rush you around 200,000 Euros. Obviously that feels like too much, but maybe it’s just keeping up with inflation for what is once again a podium-ready, near-future-proofed, privateer missile?
Consider that a full donor roadbike V4-R is knocking on 45k Euros nowadays, before you buy one cost-capped racing part…
Anyway, the latest Ducati podiums-for-privateers package has just arrived at full pace for a whopping eight riders, echoing a long previous era in WSBK. Arguably, and not a little counter-intuitively, it was maybe the ‘other’ Italian bike that was talked about most after Australia.
And, another one with its own historic slice of WSBK spacetime. We have to go back to the years just after the WSBK big bang in 1988 to have the clearest mirror image of where the new official bimota entries stack up against their peers. The YB4ei was the only consistently strong – and actually real in the results – bimota challenger before this one. (And no, I am not forgetting Anthony Gobert’s one-off winning brilliance at PI in the wet in 2000. Or the decently fast BMW-powered Alstare BB3s, even if they were erased from the EVO category history books in 2014.)
2026 season BbKRT rider Axel Bassani was so potent and consistent on the KB998 Rimini that he left PI second overall, with his first two bimota podiums. Alex Lowes was also on one PI podium – alongside Bassani – and is probably an even better bet for a top KB998 championship ranking. In the new WSBK era, maybe, just maybe, the Bims and not the Beemers will be the main challenge to Ducati’s rapid masses?
I write this as WSBK looks forward to its second round in Portugal, the supposed new era without the recent ‘big three’ top factory riders – Razgatlioglu, Bautista and Rea.
Razgatlioglu may have gone for good but with nascent HRC Honda star Jake Dixon out injured, six-times world champ Jonathan Rea has not only returned to his alma mater as a test rider, he’s racing again with the brand he started on. Who’s not intrigued by that prospect?
