2025 Australian World Superbike Race 1 Results: Bulega dominates season opener

Nicolo Bulega opened the 2025 World Superbike Championship with a dominant victory in Australia, beating Toprak Razgatlioglu and Alvaro Bautista.

The Italian opened up a lead of around six seconds before he made his mandatory pit stop on lap nine, the earliest opportunity.

Bautista stopped on the same lap, but lost out to Razgatlioglu who went one lap longer and emerged in second after the pit stop cycle.

Bulega re-established his six-second lead after the stops and managed that comfortably to the end, rolling off in the final laps and letting the gap fall to 4.8 seconds.

Razgatlioglu maintained second for the second half of the race, despite a late push from Bautista; the Spaniard ultimately coming up 0.297 seconds short of second place.

Danilo Petrucci was the best independent rider in fourth, ahead of Scott Redding and Andrea Iannone in what was an all-satellite-Ducati battle for fourth place. Iannone had been running in second place early on but temporarily slowed at turn three in the first stint and dropped to ninth, ultimately recovering to sixth.

Andrea Locatelli, Alex Lowes (who received a 0.6-second penalty for exceeding the pit intervention time), Axel Bassani, and Sam Lowes rounded out the top 10.

Michael van der Mark had featured at the front towards the end of the first stint, but crashed out at turn one, seemingly unharmed.

Iker Lecuona didn't start the race after suffering an injury in Superpole. Zaqhwan Zaidi didn't take the start having missed the 105 per cent qualifying time in Superpole.