The Australian round that supposed the start of the WSBK 2025, left us with Nicolo Bulega as a great dominator. But just after that first event a full month came without races in the calendar … unless it is for the tests that have been carried out in Portimao, and in which the teams and pilots of the championship have continued working.
With the casualties due to Jonathan Rea injury, replaced by Augusto Fernández, and Iker Lecuona whose work the HRC test pilots Borja Gómez and Tetsuta Nagashima were distributed, the grill was practically complete, in addition to seeing on track WSSP pilots.
If we focus on the results, which on the first day were slightly conditioned by water, we see that Toprak Razgatloglu was much faster than their rivals. The Turk, who came out very disappointed and even threatening in what to his future in the championship refers to Australia, was able to stop the chrono 4 tenths faster than Nicolo Bulega at the end of the last day. This shows that, at least in Portimao, the BMW has been competitive enough to allow the Turk to be filmed as fast, and give hope to the moment this can be replicated in the race.
The BMW were fine in Portimao, will they have found what they lacked?
We must not lose sight of the fact that situations on competition weekend can be very different, but it seems that the BMW works better when you check that Michael van Der Mark ended in fourth place. In third position, between Bulega and Van Der Mark, Alex Lowes’s bimota was placed, and in the fifth Remy Gardner with the Yamaha, so at first glance it seems that next weekend of competition could be more fun in terms of fighting between brands.
Petrucci, Locatelli, Álvaro Bautista who did not roll the first rainy day, Sam Lowes and Axel Bassani completed the top10 of the second day and the test. If we talked before Honda, you have to go down to the twelfth position to find a Xavi Vierge that practically achieved the same times in the first and second day, although in the first one with that time I achieved the fourth position.
We have also been able to see the debut of Augusto Fernández with the Yamaha. In a contact in one of the most complicated paths, and adding the challenge of the weather and track conditions on the first day, the chrono was stopped at 1.7 seconds of the Toprak time, so he will have to continue evolving to approach the times of both head and the rest of the grill.
> Portimao test classification day 1
> Portimao Test Classification Day 2
