MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

The WorldSBK paddock decamped to the Iberian Peninsula for four days of winter testing. Unfortunately, rain and wind followed the paddock from Jerez to Portimão. Teams were severely hampered with running at both tests and the majority could only use two days of running to try and get ready for the start of the coming campaign.

While the tests wasn’t as efficient as manufacturers would have hoped it certainly wasn’t a waste of time. The majority of the field felt that enough was done to be ready for Phillip Island, because we’ll have two days testing at the thrilling Australian venue, and a mid-March test at Portimão will allow them to get fully ready for the start of the European season at the Portuguese venue.

BMW’s talisman is back on track

After missing the Jerez test a week previously Toprak Razgatlioglu was back on track at Portimao. The Turkish rider arrived mid-afternoon on Monday and was immediately the centre of attention. Speaking to him as he left the garage he was relaxed but obviously concerned about his finger injury.

In four weeks time the lights will go out at Phillip Island and the 2025 WorldSBK season will start. The campaign is already underway, as WorldSBK is in the middle of the Iberian Winter Test season. Two days at Jerez followed by two days at Portimao are ideal for getting ready for the new season. Four days of running will be complimented by two days of testing in Australia before the first race of the season.

It’s hard to find a better way to prepare for the year. The south of Spain offers the promise of good weather and the Algarve almost guarantees it. These winter sun destinations are popular tourist traps at the time of year. What could go wrong?

Quite a bit it seems. Two days of rain-interrupted testing saw the value of the Jerez days questioned by teams. WorldSBK regulations limit teams to just ten days of testing throughout the season for their race riders. Was it better to get track time now to be ready for Australia or to save the days for later in the year? The majority of teams opted to sit it out. The expense of travelling to Jerez was balanced by the value of running.

At Silverstone it looked like the MotoGP Silly Season was pretty much over. We thought we knew who would be filling the seats still empty. Miguel Oliveira would be heading to Pramac Yamaha, where he would be joined by a rookie, either Sergio Garcia, Alonso Lopez, or Tony Arbolino. Ai Ogura would be off to Trackhouse Aprilia. And Takaaki Nakagami would have to wait and see whether Somkiat Chantra has decided to move up to MotoGP and take his place yet. Jack Miller looked to be out of a job, and off to World Superbikes.

But this year's Silly Season is living up to its name, with all of that going out of the window. Both Manuel Pecino and Ivo Schützbach at Speedweek, and Motorsport.com's Oriol Puigdemont reported last week that the second Pramac seat will not be going to a rookie after all. According to Puigdemont, Miller and his manager Aki Ajo had a meeting with Pramac boss Paolo Campinoti at Silverstone. A more significant attendee was Dorna's Chief Commercial Officer Dan Rossomondo.

Fridays at Assen are always exceptionally busy for me. Being based in The Netherlands, it's my home race, and so I have a number of obligations which come on top of my normal duties of trying to encapsulate what just happened at the race track. So today's round up will of necessity be shorter and more perfunctory than usual.

So let's start with the most obvious thing: Pecco Bagnaia is clearly the fastest at Assen. He is in the groove, and everything is going his way. "For me, it’s just because I started with a good feeling. The others will improve for sure," the Ducati Lenovo rider told us.

The work done during the season, the lessons learned and refinements made to setup, are all starting to pay off. "All the work done from the start of the season is starting to give us more feeling to start on Friday," he said. At Jerez, they had made a big change to the setup, and since then he had found the right feeling with the bike. "I wasn't able to feel well with the bike and what we did in Jerez was a big change and from that moment we started to be always competitive from the Friday."

Lessons from the past

This was an improvement over 2023, Bagnaia explained. "Last year I was starting behind every time, every time starting with big things to do on the bike. It was not easy. So these kind of things is helping a lot to start in a weekend and already know which way to take."

By the time you read this article, there is an 80% chance that the information contained within it will have been superseded. We are in the middle of MotoGP Silly Season, and in the run up to the series resuming in Assen after a short break, announcements are being made. As we saw with the news that Aprilia have signed Marco Bezzecchi to a "multiple-year deal", which is the latest fad in contract press releases, and is code for a two-year deal with options to extend. And usually, options to terminate early, though those are almost never invoked.

So where does the Bezzecchi announcement leave us? As I have written previously, and we have discussed on the Paddock Pass Podcast, Bezzecchi was part of a chain of rider (and team) movements expected to take effect before the next summer break ends and MotoGP reconvenes at Silverstone. There are more moves in the pipeline, and some may even come this week.

First, an overview of what is available and what isn't. The signing of Bezzecchi leaves just two factory seats (tentatively) open. Bezzecchi will partner Jorge Martin at Aprilia, Marc Marquez joins Pecco Bagnaia at the factory Ducati Lenovo squad, and Pedro Acosta and Brad Binder are KTM's new Red Bull Factory Racing superteam.

Open seats