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It's my favorite sign of impending spring here in the northern hemisphere: the annual migration of the Superbikes to Phillip Island in the south of Australia for an appropriate late-summer highlight for those down under and a promise that the riding will soon improve here in the north.
The Superbike World Championship begins for real this weekend with the Australian round at Phillip Island, the only WorldSBK round outside of Europe and the traditional beginning of the roadracing season. Though this year, the Superbikes only get a one-week head start over the MotoGP series.
In 2024, ROKiT BMW Motorrad rider Toprak Razgatlıoğlu simply owned the series. He won 13 consecutive races in a mid-season run of dominance and easily clinched the title despite missing two rounds entirely. Can the Turkish rider do it again? Pre-season testing has not made the prospects entirely clear, and Razgatlıoğlu will have a flock of Ducs, several former MotoGP racers, and a very fast-rising sophomore to beat back if he wants to keep doing his celebratory stoppies.
Despite Razgatlıoğlu's dominance in the points, the 2024 season brought plenty of surprises last year with eight different race winners. I expect 2025 to be similar. Let's take a look at what we know so far as the season is about to begin.
Pre-season testing leaves lots of questions
All three tests this year — in Portugal, Spain, and this week at Phillip Island — were at least partially curtailed by rain, leaving riders and teams with less dry track time to settle the final details of their 2025 packages than they would like. And while most of the top contenders are back with the same teams, there has been some shifting in the paddock and BMW has homologated a new M 1000 RR, so testing time is always precious.
That's doubly true for this week's two-day test at Phillip Island, which gives teams a chance to dial in their bikes for the opening round of racing. See highlights of the final day of testing in the video below.
As he begins his title defense, the off season and pre-season testing have been more eventful for Razgatlıoğlu than he'd like. He skipped the first pre-season test in Jerez due to a broken index finger on his right hand, suffered during the off season. Then this week, in just his third lap of the first session of testing, he highsided (seen in the Instagram post below). Battered but not significantly injured, Razgatlıoğlu was able to continue on and finished the two-day test with the fourth-best lap time, the only non-Ducati in the top five at the test.
With the Bonovo team switching from BMW to Ducati for 2025, Razgatlıoğlu and his teammate, Michael van der Mark, will be the only riders on M 1000 RRs this year.
Last year, Aruba.it Racing Ducati rider Nicolò Bulega did just about everything you could ask of a rookie. The 2023 World Supersport champion won his first-ever World Superbike race at Phillip Island and finished the season in second place behind Razgatlıoğlu and ahead of his two-time WorldSBK champion teammate, Álvaro Bautista. He has begun 2025 with the same form, finishing with the fastest lap time in all four sessions in this week's test at Phillip Island.
In addition to the factory Ducatis, expect two other former MotoGP pilots to be fighting for wins on their Panigale V4s and fighting each other for the title of top independent team rider. Danilo Petrucci on the Barni Spark Racing Team and Andrea Iannone for Team Pata GoEleven won last year and finished this week's test in the top five.
One rider who won't be a threat to win this weekend in Phillip Island is the winningest Superbike rider of all time, Jonathan Rea. The six-time champion, riding for Pata Maxus Yamaha, crashed on the first day of the test this week and fractured multiple bones in his left foot.
Meanwhile, an old name is the newest marque to join the Superbike field. From the riders to the crew members, most of what was the Kawasaki Racing Team last year is now the Bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team in 2025. Instead of racing a Kawasaki Ninja XZ-10R, Alex Lowes and Axel Bassani will be aboard the Bimota KB998 Rimini. Kawasaki took an ownership share of Bimota in 2019 and is now promoting the Bimota brand in WorldSBK. Bimota has built just 125 KB998s so far and plans to build another 125 this year on the way to finishing the 500 units required for the model to be raced in WorldSBK. The KB998 carries on Bimota tradition of putting Japanese power into a different frame. Will tuning the handling on a motorcycle with a steel trellis frame turn into a challenge for the team that's used to aluminum twin-spar frames? To some extent, this year will be an experiment. Lowes and Bassani recorded the sixth- and seventh-fastest laps in this week's test.
That leaves just one Kawasaki in the field this year, ridden by the lone U.S. rider in World Superbike. Garrett Gerloff switches from a BMW to the Kawasaki WorldSBK Team, which consists of mostly the same personnel and management as last year's Puccetti Racing Team. While Gerloff finished third in the test at Jerez, he didn't fare as well in this week's test and suffered a crash that left his ZX-10R literally in pieces, though fortunately he was not hurt.
New rules, tire realities
Superbike series now use balancing formulas to try to keep the racing close, especially when mixing different sizes and styles of engines, such as in World Supersport. One of the common ways to dial back performance of a motorcycle that has a big advantage over the others has been to cap engine speed. Some bikes were limited to a certain maximum rpm and those levels could be adjusted mid-season. This year, WorldSBK is trying a different approach and regulating fuel flow rather than rpm.
To start the season, all Superbikes will be limited to a flow rate of 47 kilograms per hour. After every two races, officials can reassess and reduce or increase that amount in 0.5-kilogram increments.
The other twist for the first round will be a mandatory pit stop, due to the Phillip Island circuit's harsh treatment of tires. Riders will be required to come in for a new rear tire at the halfway point of the two full-length 20-lap races. That injects an entire additional element of unpredictability into the races.
In the United States, you can watch WorldSBK on MavTV. To get full coverage of all sessions and all classes, the WorldSBK Videopass streaming service costs €69.90 for the entire season.
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