After a winter tormented by bad weather, WorldSBK riders and teams will be hoping for bright sunshine as the final pre-season test gets underway at Phillip Island in Australia today.<\/p>\n
Taking place on Monday and Tuesday, ahead of this weekend\u2019s 2026 season-opener, the full grid will be in action down under \u2013 with the exception of injured HRC rookie Somkiat Chantra.<\/p>\n
The 22-rider entry list, with the addition of wild-card Ryan Vickers, is led by reigning title runner-up and 2026 favourite Nicolo Bulega<\/a> (Ducati).<\/p>\n The Italian has a new team-mate this season in the form of Iker Lecuona, with former champion Alvaro Bautista<\/a> switching to the satellite Barni Spark Team.<\/p>\n Danilo Petrucci <\/a>has left Barni to take over departing champion Toprak Razgatlioglu\u2019s factory BMW ride, with the Italian joined by fellow MotoGP race winner Miguel Oliveira<\/a>.<\/p>\n Moto2 title contender Jake Dixon <\/a>(HRC) is another star rookie making his final preparations for 2026.<\/p>\n Andrea Iannone<\/a>, who famously head-butted a seagull while leading the 2015 Australian MotoGP<\/a>, is absent from the Phillip Island entry list amid doubts over the proposed \u2018Cainem Racing\u2019 project.<\/p>\n The track sessions alternate between the WSBK and WSS classes:<\/p>\n Phillip Island Test – Monday schedule (local time):
09:10-11:00 \u2013 WorldSSP Free Practice 1
11:10-13:10 \u2013 WorldSBK Free Practice 1
13:40-15:30 \u2013 WorldSSP Free Practice 2
15:40-17:40 \u2013 WorldSBK Free Practice 2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a winter tormented by bad weather, WorldSBK riders and teams will be hoping for bright sunshine as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-483307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}