The 2025 FIM Supersport World Championship grid has several big names on it including Philipp Oettl (Feel Racing WorldSSP Team) as the German star returns to the Championship he first joined inside the WorldSBK paddock. After three seasons competing in WorldSBK Oettl – who has reverted to his traditional #65 for 2025 after running the #5 in World Superbike – is back, linking up with the Feel Racing WorldSSP Team that claimed the last two titles, as he looks to take more podiums and wins in World Supersport.

Oettl has completed several tests on the Panigale V2 he’ll race with this season, including two days at a rain affected Portimao on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. Tuesday featured the best conditions, despite a damp track in the morning, before rain fell pretty much all day on Wednesday. Oettl still opted to run in the wet conditions as he adapts from WorldSBK; he was also the sole WorldSSP rider on track on Wednesday. On Day 1, he put in 68 laps and finished second in the WorldSSP field with a best time of 1’44.747s.

Reviewing the Portimao test Oettl said: “The first day was a little bit better, weather-wise, but still the track was quite wet in some places. It was very difficult to test something. The week before, we’d been to Jerez, and it was much better to test there but we found some improvements for Portimao. With the difficult conditions on Day 1, it was good. On Day 2, we had some riding in the rain, which was important because after three years in WorldSBK, it was important to try the WorldSSP bike in the wet. I feel that our test was quite complete and I’m looking forward to going to Australia.”

The 28-year-old competed in World Supersport in 2020 and 2021 with the Kawasaki Puccetti Racing outfit on the ZX-6R machine. He took four podiums in his first season, finishing third in the standings, before seven rostrums followed in 2021. Now, armed with the bike and team that won the 2023 and 2024 titles with Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) and Adrian Huertas respectively, Oettl will be aiming high – but he expected it to be ‘really tight’ during the season.

Looking ahead to the Australian Round, Oettl outlined his goals despite his predictions of a competitive field, saying: “I think it’ll be interesting because everybody’s really motivated. The field is really deep in WorldSSP this year. I think it’ll be really tight during the race weekend, but I hope to have a good result for us.”

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