BSB riders offer verdict on four-race Donington format

The four-race format used by BSB at the second Donington Park round of 2025 was necessary, but also offered something different to the usual weekend format.

In order to fit the race missed at Oulton Park in to the remainder of the season, BSB adopted a four-race weekend schedule at Donington with all four races run to a 12-lap sprint distance.

It meant that, theoretically, all four races were the same, as opposed to a usual three-race weekend that has one sprint-distance race and two races at the standard BSB race length, which at Donington would be 20 laps.

As well as the identicality of the four races in terms of distance, Sunday was more hectic for the BSB teams and riders with three races and a Warm Up instead of the usual Warm Up and two races.

Despite the busy schedule, Rory Skinner, who was pleased to be on the podium three times across the four races, felt good enough to do another race at the end of the day.

“It was good, I’m ready for another one now to be fair,” Skinner told Crash.net after Race 4 at Donington.

“It was good, I think I would’ve preferred a couple of longer races in there, but it was the way it was for a reason and it was good. I think it worked well.”

Josh Brookes also had a positive opinion overall, although he felt the racing product was not necessarily the best of what BSB can offer.

“It’s been good,” Brookes said.

“I think [...] other people had different opinions about it. I never really had a strong opinion myself, whether it was three races or four races, or long races or short races. 

“I’m just happy to ride my bike. So, not really strongly opinionated either way. 

“It worked smoothly, we had a good weekend. 

“I don’t think the racing was exactly the best that BSB has ever produced, but it was four all the same.”

Christian Iddon had a frustrating time in Donington for the most part, but Race 4 was the source of much of his disappointment by the end of the weekend.

He felt he’d have been in a better position if the race was longer, but accepted that the distance is the distance.

“I don’t really know what happened in the last race, I had a bad feeling from the first lap, really,” he said.

“I didn’t have the pace from the first moment, especially for the top-five, and I had more than that in the earlier races. 

“I was lacking a bit of pace this weekend, but I wasn’t lacking race pace, so longer races would’ve been better. 

“The dynamic changes a lot [with shorter races]. I understand that they had to do [it], to fit in with the schedule, but every team works very hard for a certain race distance, [so to shorten it] changed the dynamic massively on how you race, how other people race. 

“It gets a bit more cut-throat, even more cut-throat which is quite crazy. 

“I forget what race it was, but I was catching Andrew [Irwin], I got to mid-race, started to chip away and was getting faster and faster, so if the race had gone on for another 30 laps I’d have been happy because I feel like I could’ve come through. 

“I think there’s people today that were glad it’s only 12 laps, so they would’ve come back to me as well, so who knows. 

“The race is the length, so I have to go to the rules. If the race is 12 laps then you have to race for 12 laps, but it definitely didn’t help me this weekend that’s for sure.”