Phillip Island 2025 WorldSBK | Deep Dive

With one exception in one race, a complete Ducati benefit has stunned the paddock

Last year, BMW’s Toprak Razgatlioglu dominated, earning the German factory its first WSBK crown on an M 1000 RR that was running some important ‘superconcessions’. The title win was mostly all Toprak’s doing, but the revised BMW let him turn his late braking technique into a high-speed martial art that (sometimes literally) outmanoeuvred almost all of the opposition.

It was also obvious last season that Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) was on the way up. He was even the championship runner-up, ahead of Alvaro Bautista, his double champion teammate.

But even with Toprak on a new 2025 homologation BMW that recently and suddenly was not allowed to carry over the previous model’s superconcession chassis mods, few saw Bulega being so dominant at Round One this year, where he won all three races in a fashion that bordered on a seamless box-ticking exercise after leading every lead-up session.

After a fabulous Bulega Friday, Superpole qualifying fell under the spell of the No.11 Ducati, although the track surface being less grippy than in the recent past throttled back any ideas of new track records.

‘Nico’ simply disappeared from view so rapidly in the two-part tyre change opening race that none of the following riders could even give chase, never mind find a way to halt the Ducati’s escape velocity. Even the immense talent that is Toprak had no answer, no matter how he squashed his front tyre in the braking zones.

Bulega won Race One from Toprak by 4.8secs, but had been leading by six before he eased up around his final lap.

In a race with a mandatory pit stop, and track temps heading to the 50°C zone, maybe it was just as well they had introduced that mid-race pitstop after all. Those temps had soared compared to any other day – but the bulk of the field still hated the pit stops and thought they could go the full distance on Pirelli’s new development rear tyre.

Tyre changes or not, Ducati wrote its corporate name across the clouds in bright red ink, with five from six Ducati riders hogging the top places in Race One; five from five did that again in the Superpole Race; and then a wild top six from six monopolised the final 20-lapper on Sunday.

The Race One podium featured Bulega, Razgatlioglu and Bautista. The Superpole Race big three was Bulega, then Andrea Iannone (Team Pata GoEleven Ducati) and finally Danilo Petrucci (Barni Spark Racing Team Ducati). Race Two’s last rostrum rockets running desmo afterburners were Bulega, Bautista and Iannone again.

But those were just the leading Ducatis. V4-Rs also provided motive force in a manoeuvrable package to two resurgent Brits – Scott Redding (MGM BONOVO Racing Ducati) and Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team Ducati), who had their best rides in WorldSBK for years; in Lowes’ case, his best ever of fifth in the SP race. Even rookie rider Yari Montella (Barni Spark Racing Ducati) was eighth in the SP at his first WSBK weekend.

Phillip Islamd often is an outlier in terms of results but nobody sees the eight Ducati V4-R riders doing anything but dominating this year. Unless Dorna/FIM pull out the balancing rule blunderbuss after the two-round performance checkpoint and throttle back the maximum fuel flow rate for Ducati.

The unique Bimota KB998 was just another distraction to point your overworked central nervous system at as Alex Lowes and Axel Bassani delivered positive top-10 results in every race.

Honda were (relatively speaking) nowhere as usual, with Iker Lecuona injured once again and declared unfit. Yamaha were hurting from the lack of injured superstar Jonathan Rea but Andrea Locatelli (Pata Maxus Yamaha) put up a good fight to be top non-Ducati, sixth and seventh, in Sunday’s races.

The next round (March 28 and 30) is at Portimao, Portugal, which Toprak loves and Bulega is a little indifferent about.

Remy Gardner – DNF, 10th, DNF

Gardner qualified ninth in Superpole, but his first race ended after he crashed and then his bike broke down in spectacular fashion. On Sunday he had a very fast T1 crash and was out from then. No points so far for Remy. “Superpole wasn’t too bad at all and that’s the positive we could take from Saturday. The lap time was okay and made us able to start from the third row, which left us confident.”

Bimota – They’re Back!

We must be getting close to 10 different iterations of Bimota entries into the WorldSBK (and even WSSP) championship. All its previous WSBK entries, except for maybe (maybe) the very first one back in 1988, failed in a most Italian fashion. That’s not a criticism, as every Italian company’s ambition and passion eventually meets finance and reality issues. Not all survive, never mind thrive.

The new Bimota KB998 Rimini model had a decent WSBK debut, but the whole new Bimota entity is nothing like the previous ones.

For starters, Kawasaki is more than an engine supplier for the Italian chassis maestros. They are a full partner and their heft is bankrolling, supporting and effectively running the whole show, except for the chassis and its design philosophies that were born and made within two golf-shots distance of Italy’s Adriatic coast.

The on-site team running the entire effort is the old KRT Provec mob, with only one Bimota tech present at Phillip Island. Provec has won seven world championships, all in WSBK, as Kawasaki’s lead team.

This very serious and truly exciting ‘new’ manufacturer in WSBK racing seems certain to buck the trend of all previous Bimota iterations.

The electronically controlled wings  are one obvious example but, make no mistake, this is a homologation special every bit as exotic as the YB4ei, the Honda RC30, Yamaha’s OW01 or Ducati’s original 851.

A new era has begun.

Ducati Cup?

Before the race weekend, and even in the early stages of it, the dreaded phrase that has haunted the darker corners of WSBK’s production-derived palaces several times before was heard through the ether… The Ducati Cup.

This cruel jibe could be levelled at MotoGP too in the last few years, but after the weekend’s race results, you can see where people are coming from.

In the past in WSBK, even in its golden era that people who were usually not there keep speaking about, it was perfectly possible to buy two Ducatis and get some wizened desmo magus to set your engines to their peak and go out and win races. And even a world championship, in the case of Troy Corser’s first. More or less.

We are very definitely back in that territory again, even if you can only have one V4-R in use on track at one time, and you need an electronics whiz rather than a top engine artisan.

The ‘worst’ Ducati in Superpole qualifying was Ryan Vickers’ bike, and he’s a rookie up from BSB. Another rookie, Yari Montella, was 13th, and second-year Superbiker Sam Lowes placed 11th on the grid.

Toprak Razgatlioglu commented: “This year all the Ducatis are at the front. This is not normal. This is almost Superbike like a Ducati Cup.”

RESULTS

WorldSBK Race 1

WorldSBK Superpole Race

WorldSBK Race 2

WorldSBK Championship Standings