Jerez Test, Day 2 times at 1 pm: Test rider faster than the factory riders

Michael van der Mark has just been demoted to the role of BMW tester, but in the Superbike tests at Jerez he’s raising hell. Yet are the factory riders taking it a bit easy?

Winter testing benchmarks are, as is well known, always to be taken with a grain of salt. Especially on the Andalusian track, where grip conditions change drastically with the slightest shift in temperature, wind, and other environmental factors. That said, the Dutchman was faster than everyone in the first half of day two: at 1 pm the benchmark was his 1'38"938, short of both Nicolò Bulega’s official record with Ducati (1'37"659) and Andrea Locatelli’s time from the previous day (1'38"641).

In the first stop on the road to the 2026 Superbike World Championship (entry list here), new pairings between factory riders and crew chiefs are debuting in the garages. The most striking change is at Bimota, where Spaniard Uri Pallares has arrived alongside Axel Bassani. He replaces Marcel Duinker, who never clicked with the Veneto rider, and has been moved to Kawasaki Puccetti as a technical consultant. In other words, he’ll act as a bridge between the Italian team, which is once again banking on Garrett Gerloff, and the Akashi racing department. At BMW, Danilo Petrucci is now followed by Marcus Eschembacher (formerly with Michael van der Mark), while Andrew Pitt is the new arrival alongside Miguel Oliveira. Making waves too is the arrival of Giulio Nava, formerly with Ducati, in Andrea Locatelli’s Yamaha garage.

Michael van der Mark is developing BMW evolutions, particularly on the electronics side, while the two new full-time riders have started out with the same configuration used at the end of the season. There’s plenty of activity at Yamaha as well, where Andrea Locatelli and Stefano Manzi continue to run a modified swingarm. The Iwata brand has long been under concessions, meaning it can use engine and chassis parts not homologated on the production YZF-R1. Despite this advantage, however, the gap to BMW and Ducati remained substantial last season.

1. Van der Mark (BMW) 1'38"938; 2. Lowes Alex (Bimota) 1'39"065; 3. Vierge (Yamaha) 1'39"125; 4. Locatelli (Yamaha) 1'39"161; 5. Manzi (Yamaha) 1'39"320; 6. Oliveira (BMW) 1'39"370; 7. Petrucci (BMW) 1'39"642; 8. Bassani (Bimot) 1'39"896; 9. Chantra (Honda) 1'40"132; 10. Dixon (Honda) 1'40"576; 11. Nagashima (Honda) 1'40"902.