The three biggest changes for BSB 2025

From former champions switching teams and brands to others rejoining the championship after a time away, there is much change coming in BSB this year, and here are our three picks for the most consequential.

TAS swaps BMW for Ducati

Rory Skinner’s return to BSB in 2024 did not go as well as, say, Scott Redding’s, when he left the Grand Prix paddock for the 2019 season.

Whereas Redding won the title at what was his first attempt in BSB, Skinner’s third full season in the premier class of the British Championship was marred by injury.

Although he did pick up the only victory for a BMW rider in 2024 (at his home race in Knockhill), the Scottish rider missed half the season through injury and finished only 17th in the final standings.

Aside from age (Skinner was 22 when he made his return to BSB last year, while Redding was 26 in 2019), perhaps the key difference between Skinner’s 2024 season and Redding’s 2019 season was machinery.

Although the Ducati Panigale V4 R was in only its first season of racing in 2019, it was immediately one of the most competitive packages available in production racing. Alvaro Bautista dominated the first half of that year’s World Superbike Championship, and BSB 2019 was a straight fight between Redding and his PBM Ducati teammate, Josh Brookes.

On the other hand, the BMW M1000 RR has proven to be a more difficult bike to bring to competitiveness. Only in 2024 was it able to win a dry WorldSBK race, having been introduced in its initial form in the same year as the V4 Ducati, and, although the BMW has been a hit on the roads and in the National Superstock class, it hasn’t found the same success in the premier BSB category, with the Skinner being the only BMW-mounted rider to claim a race win last year.

Skinner’s potential is clear, and was made so in 2020 when he cruised to the British Supersport Championship crown, winning all but two of the 12 races that year, and taking 11 podium finishes.

Switching to Ducati — which by now has won three of the past six BSB titles — while remaining in a team he now knows well and which clearly has faith in him could be the thing that allows Skinner to unlock that potential on a Superbike.

Josh Brookes to Honda

Josh Brookes’ move to DAO Racing comes at an intriguing moment. A Senior TT podium finisher in 2024 with FHO BMW, Brookes’ second season on the M1000 RR in BSB didn’t go to script.

The Australian was a winner at Silverstone and Oulton Park when he first moved to FHO in 2023, but only managed two fourth places as his best result in 2024.

The BMW’s BSB issues mentioned above of course apply to Brookes as they do to Skinner, while the Honda CBR1000RR-R the Australian is about to hop on for the first time in BSB was proven to have potential in 2024 by Tommy Bridewell, who came up one point short of the title in his first year on the Fireblade.

An expanded presence for Honda on the 2025 grid is a reward for its display of potential, and two-time BSB Champion Brookes is surely the premier Honda rider of those outside the official team.

The return of Ray

The capacity for Ray’s return to go badly is obvious. He’s spent two years in WorldSBK with every results sheet going (apart from Imola 2023) saying he’s actually not that good, and so the potential for his confidence to take a while to rebuild from that experience is clearly there.

Not only that, he has to adjust back to British tracks and BSB rules; most notably no electronics, although that is probably not going to be such an issue for a rider with the natural seemingly possessed by the 2022 BSB Champion.

He also has to become comfortable with running at the front again and the pressure it carries, plus that brought by walking into the team of the reigning champion, Kyle Ryde.

On the other hand, Ray has beaten Ryde before, when he won the title in 2022 and they were teammates, as they are in 2025, at the OMG Yamaha team. Surely, there is comfort to be taken from the results of three years ago.

Sure, Ryde has taken steps since then and become a deserving champion in his own right, but putting two champions together in the same team is always going to create excitement.