Points finish for Nagashima in SBK Race 1 at Phillip Island
Phillip IslandThe first of the 2026 SBK season’s races brought points for Tetsuta Nagashima and fellow Honda rider Ryan Vickers.
The inaugural race of the 2026 Superbike World Championship was staged today at Australia’s Phillip Island Circuit, and it proved to be a solid one for Honda HRC test rider Tetsuta Nagashima, who substitutes for recovering factory rider Somkiat Chantra this weekend. Jake Dixon is also sidelined this weekend through injury.
The team used a brief third and final practice to make further refinements to the setup of Tetsuta’s CBR1000RR-R, while the rider continued to build confidence, shaving another fraction of a second off his best of Friday. In the hard-fought Superpole that followed two hours later, Nagashima did his best to maximise the 15 minutes available. In warm, dry conditions similar to Friday, the Japanese rider put in seven laps to place seventeenth with a time of 1’29.986. In setting his fastest time of the weekend so far, he secured a spot on the sixth row of the starting grid for the weekend’s first race, 0.017” from Ryan Vickers who is competing as a wildcard with the Honda HRC test team.
The first 22-lap Superbike race of the 2026 racing season got underway on time and in dry conditions (air temp. 21°C, track 42°C). Making a solid start and settling into seventeenth position after some opening-lap toing and froing, Nagashima focused on putting together a clean and consistent race and was able to maintain a solid pace throughout. Effective tyre management over the first half of the race meant that Nagashima was able to move ahead of fellow Honda rider Vickers and local rider Gardner to move into the points zone with five laps to go. Battling with Vickers in the final stages, a determined Nagashima came out on top in this Honda ‘derby’ to cross the line fourteenth and score two well-deserved championship points.
Sunday will see Nagashima compete in the Superpole Race and second full-length SBK race, which will round out the weekend’s action.
Today’s race was not so bad in the end. Of course, the position is far from perfect, but considering that I’m a test rider, we can see it as a solid result. My pace was consistent, especially in the second half of the race. If I can improve a bit more at the start, perhaps I can be closer to the top ten. During the race, I could really feel and understand where we need to improve the bike, particularly in terms of traction and also on the electronics side. Sure, we already know where we are losing time, but during the race everything feels more real, closer to the reality of what we need to improve, also in terms of feeling. So overall, I’m quite happy with our work so far here at Phillip Island. I will continue to do my best tomorrow and try to collect even more data. I already felt better in Race 1 than I did in qualifying and better than on day one and during testing, and this means we are improving step by step. We’ll keep working to improve through different corners and work on different setup details, because that’s the only way to improve and is very important in terms of development.
Today’s race was not so bad in the end. Of course, the position is far from perfect, but considering that I’m a test rider, we can see it as a solid result. My pace was consistent, especially in the second half of the race. If I can improve a bit more at the start, perhaps I can be closer to the top ten. During the race, I could really feel and understand where we need to improve the bike, particularly in terms of traction and also on the electronics side. Sure, we already know where we are losing time, but during the race everything feels more real, closer to the reality of what we need to improve, also in terms of feeling. So overall, I’m quite happy with our work so far here at Phillip Island. I will continue to do my best tomorrow and try to collect even more data. I already felt better in Race 1 than I did in qualifying and better than on day one and during testing, and this means we are improving step by step. We’ll keep working to improve through different corners and work on different setup details, because that’s the only way to improve and is very important in terms of development.
