Ryan reflects on Phillip Island

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how Australia went. I have to be. The racer inside always wants to do better, but I have to remember the situation we are in and the difficult learning curve that it is. People have said to me that Phillip Island is one of the hardest tracks to go fast at. It's easy to learn and not too technical, but to go fast at it is difficult.

To go to Phillip Island, having not been there before, we jumped up into P8 during testing and did some really good lap times. At first, we thought this was going to be great; we were making progress, but we hit a wall. It was a combination of the new crew, new to World SBK and to the Ducati, so they are still learning things; I'm new to Ducati, I'm new to the circuit, I'm still learning things. We can't pinpoint exactly why we couldn't go any quicker; we are learning as a team. More to come from the bike, more from the electronics, and more to come from me.

As a racer riding around in P13 - P15, I hate it, but if I didn't hate it, I wouldn't be a motorcycle racer. I was so happy to score points on our first races, and in the last race, we improved, with more consistent lap times, overall faster, and my feeling was better with the bike.

We left Australia happy and I am extremely motivated now because I want to progress and feel more comfortable, make the bike more mine. We still need to find a base setup where I am comfortable on the bike yet, so we need to keep working really hard with this. We have to understand the situation, going to new tracks almost every round and we are at a disadvantage with experience. If we keep working this hard, it will come together and we will see the results.

It's easier to ride a World SBK when you first get on it, but riding it fast is more difficult. There is so much you can change on the bike, with the electronics and getting everything to work in sync together is a lot more complicated. The guys I am racing against now are all experienced, some are MotoGP race winners and multiple time World Champions and not only more experienced on the bikes, also the circuits.

We've come back, had a full debrief with the team, and made some plans for Portimão. We did a one-day test there at the start of the year, and it was OK. We can take some of what we learnt at Phillip Island. 

My knee is getting better each day, just waiting for the last part of the scab to heal before having the stitches out.

I am now off to Spain from the 16th of March until the 8th of April, flying into Portimão for Round Two. The Motocorsa team have supplied me with a 2025 V4 Ducati and a 400cc training bike and I will be working with a coach there to dial in this next step for what I need to do riding-wise. I will invest my time in improving my riding style to be more in line with World SBK. I'm really looking forward to it.

Thanks for all your support!

Ryan