MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

World Supersport's last race of the weekend would be eighteen laps of Phillip Island with a pit stop in the middle with the same ten lap limit on the tyres as yesterday. The temperature was up to 22ºC with a 11kmh wind. So far no geese, penguins or other wildfowl made an appearance in the races.

World Supersport opens the racing for 2025, with Yamaha replacing the R6 with a 890cc triple, the R9. Stefano Manzi is the only rider from the top three last year to be competing this year. The track is so abrasive on tyres that there is a mandated pitstop and a ten lap limit on tyres in the eighteen lap race. A minimum of 78 seconds must be taken in the pit stop, with the time cut multiplied by five as a penalty where applicable.

Bo Bendsneyder started his 2025 campaign on the MV Agusta with a pole position and a crash.

Valentin Debise, having swapped his Yamaha for a Ducati, opens the 2025 season with the top spot in the first session of the year with Tom Booth-Amos less than a tenth of a second off his pace on a Triumph Street Triple. Bo Bendsneyder kept up the variety of machinery putting his MV Agusta in third place. Marcel Schroetter was fourth quickest on his Ducati with a brace of new Yamaha R9s rounding out the top six, with Lucas Mahias and Can Oncu aboard. 

Times:

Niccolo Bulega ended as fastest on the first day of testing for the WorldSBK class of 2025. In dry weather at Jerez, the Aruba.it Ducati rider led GoEleven's Andrea Iannone by nearly half a second. Scott Redding made a welcome return to Ducati, putting his MGM Bonovo bike into third place under a tenth behind Iannone.

Garrett Gerloff, now on the Kawasaki after BMW cut back to two bikes, was fourth fastest after the first day, finishing ahead of Axel Bassani on the Bimota, what is now Kawasaki's factory effort in World Superbikes. 

The switch to the WorldSSP class has been a positive move for Bo Bendsneyder. The Dutchman topped both days of testing at Phillip Island for the World Supersport riders, leading fellow Moto2 refugee Jaume Masia by over half a second. Valentin Debise was third fastest overall, ahead of Can Öncü on the Yamaha R9.

Combined Times:

The weather has not looked kindly on testing for the WorldSBK series so far in 2025. After a windy but relatively dry day on Tuesday, testing on Wednesday was mostly wet, with only occasional dry spells. Even when the track was dry, the times were 1.6 seconds off Toprak Razgatlioglu's best time.

As a result, nine of the 21 WorldSBK riders who rode on Tuesday decided to sit out the Wednesday session and save their testing days, while Philipp Oettl was the only WorldSSP rider of the six who rode on Tuesday to take to the track on Wednesday.

Toprak Razgatlioglu ended the first day of the Portimão WorldSBK test as fastest on his first day back in the saddle of his BMW M1000RR. Despite an injured right index finger, which he hurt in a training crash and which forced him to wear a special glove, the reigning world champion mastered rather tricky conditions, with a lot of wind and a track that was still damp in patches, to just nip ahead of Bimota's Axel Bassani. 

The last race of the year for World Supersport had Federico Caricasulo and Can Oncu starting a the front after recording fast laps yesterday.