Xavi Vierge (Honda HRC) had a strong showing in the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship grid’s return to Portimao for Day 1 of testing ahead of the Pirelli Portuguese Round. The Spanish Rider finished P4, and is coming off of a solid season opener Down Under in the Australian Round, where he racked up a trio of P11 finishes. These finishes landed him securely in the points, currently sitting at 11^th in the Riders’ Championship.

This test was anticipated to be a chance to make up for lost time in the preseason where the two test days scheduled in late January were largely rained out; unfortunately, rain again played its part in Day 1 of testing and largely limited riders from riding in the morning session. Vierge’s P4  today comes after a P7 and a P9 in preseason testing in Portimao.

“We were expecting dry time today, but unfortunately it was quite wet all morning.” said Vierge “Of course this changed our plan because we didn’t have enough track time to test everything, but we were able to test the most important things like the electronics. At the start, the feeling not perfect, coming from Australia, the temperatures are much lower and it’s a very different track, so we needed to adapt the bike setup a bit. After a few pit exits I started to feel good, and it allowed us to focus on the test items we wanted to try.”

A key difference from the testing carried out here in Portimao and the Race weekend in Australia was the temperature on-track. Vierge mentioned that in testing today the team found ways to improve their setup, good news for his team should the 2025 season continue to be as rainy as the preseason was. Hotter weather may spell change for Vierge and Team HRC, however #97 sounds confident his team can find a solution should that be the case.

“We found something that we had been working on in the past, and lets say we recovered it, and it looks like it was helping us a lot, as soon as we started working on it we improved our pace a lot.” said Vierge “I was happy, because I think even with the less than ideal conditions we were fast with the race tire. We need to stay grounded because as we know, those low temperatures are always helpful to us, and we need to see if we are still as competitive in higher temperatures. For the moment, today was really positive, it feels really nice to be fast and competitive, so I am happy with that and a big thank you to the team for their work.”

Keep up with Vierge and the rest of the WorldSBK grid this 2025 season with the WorldSBK VideoPass!