Conclusion of the Hungarian round of the World Superbike Championship (WSB) last weekend saw the series enter it’s six-week summer break and recent track action has seen reigning champion Toprak Razgatlioglu win no less than nine races in a row to take control at the top of the title standings.
Winning run
After a relatively slow start to the season, Phillip Island and Assen yielding a mixed bag of results, BMW’s Razgatlioglu has been hitting top gear of late and probably wishes there was a round every weekend at the moment such has been his dominance.
A hat-trick at Portimao and a double at Most helped him close the gap to main rival Nicolo Bulega but the Italian responded at Cremona with three wins of his own to keep the Turkish rider at arm’s length. However, the last three rounds have seen Razgatlioglu not only close the gap but surge clear.
Three wins at Misano, Donington Park and, most recently, Balaton Park in Hungary made it nine successive wins for Toprak, and he’s gone into the summer break with a 26-point advantage over Bulega. The run of victories coincided with the announcement that he’d be leaving the series in 2026 to join the Pramac Yamaha MotoGP so the negotiations with teams and manufacturers haven’t distracted him in the slightest.
With his future sorted, he clearly wants to leave World Superbikes on a high and with three titles to his name. Now he’s in the ascendancy, few would bet against him achieving that.
Bulega faultering?
Of course, Bulega will be keen to have a say in that. Second overall in his debut WSB season was a superb effort particularly the second half of the season where he won five races and was an almost ever-present on the podium.
That made the Ducati rider one of the favourites for this year’s title and he’s delivered on that promise. Apart from the second race at Balaton, where he made an incorrect tyre choice and finished a lowly 13th, he’s finished first or second in every race he’s finished.
However, Razgatlioglu leads the win count, 15 to 8, and crucially has only had one DNF to Bulega’s four. The Italian will point to these, especially the two at Assen where he was leading comfortably each time, and say if it wasn’t for them, he’d still have a decent-sized lead in the championship.
The reality though is that he hasn’t and whilst it would be harsh to say he’s faltering, he doesn’t look as big a threat as he was at the first few rounds. Toprak appears to have the measure of him so it will be interesting to see how Bulega responds at the next round at Magny Cours at the beginning of September.
Lowes continues to impress
After Razgatlioglu and Bulega, second Ducati Racing rider Alvaro Bautista has featured on the podium 13 podiums albeit without a win and five DNF’s means he’s back in fifth overall behind the consistent Danilo Petrucci and Andrea Locatelli.
Petrucci (Barni Ducati) and Locatelli (PATA Yamaha) are stringing together strong seasons with 11 podiums between them but so too is Sam Lowes on the sole Elf Marc VDS Ducati. In his second season in the series, the British rider has stood on the podium on four occasions and is definitely the best of the rest.
Yes, he’s crashed out of several races when well placed, a trait that continues to haunt him somewhat, but he’s a far more polished Superbike rider than he was twelve months ago. His single lap pace in qualifying remains as strong as ever but he’s added race pace now too and rider coach and former WSB podium finisher and BSB champion Leon Camier must take some credit for helping make Lowes the threat he now is.
He’s finished in the top six in 14 of the 24 races to take place so far in 2025 and although the form and dominance of Razgatlioglu and Bulega means it’s going to be a tall order to take his maiden victory – the duo have won all but one of the races – he’s not far away. It’s little wonder he’s already done a deal to stay at the same team for next year.
Improvements at Honda
Like their recent MotoGP fortunes, it ‘s been far from plain sailing in the World Superbike Championship for Honda in recent seasons. Riders Xavi Vierge and Iker Lecuona arrived with considerable Grand Prix pedigree in 2022 and they’ve both suffered their share of broken bones as they’ve strived to get the Honda Fireblade at the front.
But whilst wins are still a long way off, they are more of a threat in 2025, and podiums remain a distinct possibility. They’ve featured in the top six more frequently this season and the package is allowing the two Spaniards to fight towards the front more often.
Lekuona is, arguably, the faster of the two riders with Vierge the more consistent and the duo currently sit in ninth and seventh respectively in the standings. Not where they or the Japanese giant want to be but they’re fighting more regularly for top six positions rather than aiming just for the top ten.
Lekuona was unlucky to be taken out in race one at Balaton Park, a broken wrist ruling him out of the rest of the weekend, but if they have a trouble-free run to the end of the season both he and Vierge should feature well. Whether it’s enough for them to keep their rides for 2026 though, with Jake Dixon strongly rumoured to be taking one of the rides, remains to be seen.
Running out of time?
For some riders, most notably Jonathan Rea, Michael van der Mark and Andrea Iannone, they’re running of time to bag themselves a decent ride for 2026. The summer break is traditionally when deals are done so we’re likely to find out more over the forthcoming weeks about their destinations.
Rea, of course, suffered a bad foot injury before the season had even begun, missing several rounds as a result. After a mixed maiden campaign with Yamaha last year, it was the last thing he needed. Since he returned, progress has been slow but whilst he’s shown the odd glimpse of form, fifth and sixth at Donington being an example, what’s lacking has been consistency.
Yamaha have already re-signed Andrea Locatelli for 2026 and the GYTR GRT team have done similar with Remy Gardner, also promoting champion-elect Stefano Manzi from the World Supersport series. That just leaves one berth left so Rea may get a stay of execution with his experience being key. He has, however, been linked to a second Ducati at Elf Marc VDS team.
For van der Mark, now in his fifth consecutive year with BMW, it’s been a horror season. Being team-mate to Razgatlioglu is no easy task but in 2024 he enjoyed a strong season finishing sixth overall. This year has been the opposite though and he’s only finished inside the top ten in one of the last 12 races so although a popular member of the team, his time with the German manufacturer may be running out.
Iannone is a complex character but after starting the season with a bang, taking two podiums at the opening round at Australia, he’s failed to score points in ten of the races since. The Ducati is clearly a good bike, but the Italian has made several mistakes, most notably at Balaton where he caused a seven-rider pile up so perhaps a change of scenery will do him good.
Solid progress
It’s never easy for a British rider to make the transition from British Superbikes to World Superbikes. New circuits to learn, language barriers to overcome and usually on second-rate machinery.
Former BSB champions Tarran Mackenzie and Bradley Ray have both struggled recently, the latter returning to BSB this year after his two seasons in WSB yielded just 33 points and one top ten finish. He’s dominating BSB again in 2025, but will it give him a path back onto the World stage? Probably not.
One rider who’s making a fist of things in his debut WSB season though is Ryan Vickers. Signing a two-year deal with the Motocorsa Ducati guaranteed him security and moving to the team’s base in Italy and learning the language showed his commitment to integrating with them as much as possible.
It’s been far from easy, but he’s only failed to finish three races, learning all the time, and he’s performed really well at the last two rounds at Donington Park, a circuit he knows well from his BSB days, and Balaton Park, a new track for everyone which made it a level playing field.
He’s establishing himself as a regular points scorer and should have come away from Donington and Balaton with more than just one top finish to his name. His pace is good and he’s making few mistakes so the signs are all there for him to have a good final third of the season.
Having started watching motorcycle races all over the world form childhood, Phil Wain has been a freelance motorcycle journalist for almost 20 years and is features writer for a number of publications including BikeSport News, Classic Racer and Road Racing Ireland, as well as being a regular contributor to MCN and MCN Sport.
He is PR officer for a number of teams and riders at both the British Superbike Championship and International road races, including PBM Ducati, John McGuinness, KTS Racing and Jackson Racing. He is also heavily involved with the Isle of Man TT Races working with the race organisation, writing official press releases and race reports as well as providing the TV and radio broadcasting teams with statistical information.