WorldSBK?
Scott Redding- MGM Bonovo Racing Ducati
As far as WorldSBK racers with experience of every form of top flight racing goes, Scott Redding may well be the grandaddy of them all. At 32 years of age Scott is not‘ young’ for a WorldSBK racer, but he has several years on competitors like Alvaro Bautista( 40) and Jonathan Rea( 38).
He’ s been around so long that he has even won a 125cc GP race, in 2008. You know, back in the pre-Moto3 days of two stroke engines?
He soon went on to be a serial Moto2 race winner, Moto2 championship runner-up in 2013, and even a podium finisher, before a year as a factory MotoGP™ rider for Aprilia spun him out of the prototype racing world’ s orbit.
It’ s particularly appropriate that we chose Scott to publish his personal opinions about this kind of thing here at a British round of WorldSBK, because it was BSB that re-ignited his career, in one glorious championship-winning spree in 2019.
In some ways Scott’ s arrival in the official WorldSBK Ducati set-up in 2020 was a reward for this BSB success. He has won 12 races since then and secured a whopping 40 podiums.
With experience of all those racing classes what is Scott’ s current take on what WorldSBK means to him, personally?
“ WorldSBK is good racing, a good atmosphere in the paddock, a bit more relaxed, and it keeps a bit more of the old school racing style- which is slowly filtering out.”
A little wistfulness, maybe, in that last comment, as Redding is clearly the kind of rider who thrives on a degree of needle and personal rivalry.“ You can have conversations with people, so I guess relaxed is the word,” said Scott.“ But racing is racing, it is what it is. Slowly, racing is going … everyone is nice. It is not my way of racing but it is the way it is going. Something in the water, I think …”
Remy Gardner- GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team
That’ s both a glittering and a heavy surname for any rider to take on the world with during their early career. As his stats shows, Remy had already proven himself- as himself- on the global stage before he got anywhere near WorldSBK.
It was a big jump for the 2021 Moto2 World Champion to go from Moto2 to MotoGP™ for one season, but it was a whole change of paddock, manufacturer and racing philosophy for Remy to deal with when he first joined WorldSBK, Yamaha and the GYTR GRT Yamaha team back in 2023.
He’ s still racing for what is effectively a shadow Yamaha official team in the GRT set-up.
At time of press he has taken two podiums in WorldSBK and, on a gradually improving Yamaha R1, he may well have secured more by the time we get to Donington.
As we approach the second Anglophone event of the 2025 season, can he tell us what WorldSBK means to him, personally?
“ WorldSBK means racing bikes and giving a really good show,” said Remy. Ever the matter-of-fact person in his statements, he continued on that pure racing theme.“ It’ s racing as usual for me. It is a continuation of my career- somewhere else. My ambition is to be a World Champion again, but now in WorldSBK. It means the same for me as MotoGP™, Moto2, Moto3, but it is a new challenge.”
WHAT DOES WorldSBK MEAN TO ME 59