Dunlop announced last Saturday<\/a> (18 April) that he would be switching to the Panigale for the 2026 road racing<\/a> campaign having been on the BMW for only one year.<\/p>\n Dunlop won races at the North West 200 last year aboard the M1000 RR, but did not win in either the sole Superbike race or either Superstock race with the BMW last year.<\/p>\n Michael Dunlop, 2026 Oulton Park BSB Test. Credit: Ian Hopgood Photography.<\/p>\n \u00a9\u00a0Ian Hopgood Photography<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n At the same time he\u2019d switched to Ducati in the Supersport class after years of winning with the Yamaha R6. Last year\u2019s Supersport TTs saw Dunlop take Ducati\u2019s first victories at the world\u2019s most famous road race since 1995.<\/p>\n The Oulton Park outing comes only a few days after Dunlop took delivery of the V4 R and is the first step of his road racing preparation for this year. After five of six sessions, Dunlop\u2019s best lap time is a 1m38.808s.<\/p>\n After taking his first North West 200 wins in nine years at the 2025 event, Dunlop will be defending the headline North West 200 race on Saturday 9 May. He also won the Supersport and Superstock races on the first race day last year.<\/p>\n The Isle of Man TT begins on 25 May, with the Senior TT due to conclude the fortnight on 6 June. Dunlop\u2019s two Supersport wins last year were accompanied by a pair of wins in the Supertwin class (now renamed Sportbike for 2026), meaning he goes there this year with 33 TT wins under his belt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Isle of Man TT legend Michael Dunlop has been getting acquainted with his new Ducati Panigale V4 R…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,28425,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-624086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-road-racing","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624086","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=624086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ih_bsb_oulton-park-test_16247.jpg\")
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