After two days of testing in Portimao ahead of the Pirelli Portuguese Round, the 2025 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship’s Ducati factory riders will walk away with a mixed bag of results. While both riders in red looked fast in the limited time available, Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) looks to be getting closer to his 2024 form than it seemed in Phillip Island. In the case of Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati), while he saw half the already limited amount of track time due to his decision not to test on Friday, he looked uncharacteristically slow in his Day 2 time, finishing ninth.

Many of the grid’s Ducati riders enjoyed a very strong start to the season. Phillip Island’s Round 1 saw Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) earn his career-first WorldSBK hat-trick, propelling himself out to an early lead in the Riders’ Championship. Alongside him in the garage, Alvaro Bautista had a strong weekend, finishing P3 in Race 1, and P2 in Race 2, the only hiccup coming in the Tissot Superpole Race, in which he finished in P19 after a Turn 6 crash set him far behind the rest of the grid.

 Unfortunately, once again, rain made its presence felt in Portuguese testing, giving déjà vu to the preseason event held here in late January. In essence, the rainfall limited teams to half days each day, a tough break for what has already been a limited preseason. While the rain was present, riders had more dry running time than they saw in the prior preseason event. Here are some of the takeaways for the pair in their own words:

 “The rain made it a difficult and strange test” – Bulega on his Portimao test experience

While Bulega earned P2 on both days, he was fortunate that he walked away from the test uninjured as in Turn 11, he crashed off of the track requiring a trip to the medical center, while they gave him the all-clear shortly after, it ate into his already limited time on track. On his experience across the testing days, Bulega said “it was a bit of a difficult test for us because we worked hard to find a good feeling, but it didn’t arrive. This morning [Day 2] I had a big crash on a very fast corner here in Portimao. Fortunately, I am good, but it was more difficult to work because we lost some time as a result, then later the rain made it a difficult and strange test. At the end of the session, the last 15 minutes, we were a bit better; we still have lots of work to do but in the end, we were a lot better.”

“We will have to see what the conditions will be like on the race weekend” – Bautista establishes a baseline for the Portuguese Round

Alvaro Bautista elected to only take to the track on Saturday’s Day 2, and despite being uncharacteristically low on the time sheet, the veteran rider does not seem concerned about his odds in the upcoming Portuguese Round. “We were able to do some laps, especially in the morning, we started the day with the same setup that we finished the last round with, in Australia.” said Bautista, “The feeling was good, I felt good on the bike. We made some small changes but nothing big. In the afternoon with the rain, the feeling was a bit worse because I couldn’t feel the tires as easily. In general, in the morning I felt good, the pace wasn’t too bad, but we will have to see what the conditions will be like on the race weekend, we prepared the base setup and we will adapt the package from there.”

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