Back in 2024, after wrapping up the inaugural season of the WorldWCR, we wrote a comprehensive review of the season, talking about the competition as well as our expectations of the championship’s future.
Now that we are three seasons in and standing at the point of the arbitrary ‘end of an era’ defined by the single-supplier contract, it feels fitting to look back at what we experienced in the past three seasons.
All photos © Dorna WSBK Organization Srl
The Title Fights
In our review of the inaugural season, we mentioned that it was a no-brainer to expect the marquee names – Ana Carrasco and Maria Herrera – to be title contenders. But in fact we got Sara Sanchez and Beatriz Neila who were very much in the fight as well.
Since the second season, as Ana Carrasco moving on to WorldSSP with Honda, and Sara Sanchez not able to find the same performance as in the first season, the title fight has mostly been down to a duel between Maria Herrera and Beatriz Neila.
Now we already know Maria Herrera won the title in 2025 and was able to defend it in 2026. Beatriz Neila did put up a fight and was able to hold her own. Last season she was more consistent than Maria Herrera, ending the season with only a 5-point deficit behind Maria. In fact, had Paola Ramos not been demoted three places in Race 1 of Jerez, the point deficit would have been down to three, or maybe the last race would have turned out differently and who knows who would’ve been World Champion. But this season, it seems like there’s still something missing in Neila’s overall campaign and her single race weekends. She is still able to win races, but more often than not, she’s not on the top step of the podium.
The 2026 season actually started with not just two title contenders. It was only in Assen that we learned that a rough diamond needs a bit more effort to fully reach all its glory. We will talk about this a bit more later in this article.
Those Who Can Spice It up
In 2024, three riders were able to win races (Carrasco, Herrera, Sanchez), and three riders outside of the winners were able to stand on the podium (Neila, Roberta Ponziani, Tayla Relph).
In 2025, we got four race winners, one of them being the wild-card sensation Paola Ramos, and three more podium finishers; this season, we are back to three winners, and four more podium finishers.
Across all three seasons, it was Carrasco, Herrera, Sanchez, Neila, Ponziani, Ramos who were able to win races, and Relph, Chloe Jones, Lucie Boudesseul, Muklada Sarapuech who were able to stand on the podium.
Among these riders, Paola Ramos was the one who entered the championship with a bang. She wasn’t the pleasant surprise as a rookie. She is the rookie title contender, having already made her mark by winning a race on her wild-card debut in 2025. Paola also opened the season making the loudest noise possible: she finished second in Race 1 of Portimao and won Race 2, tied with the reigning World Champion Maria Herrera in points. However, her title fight sort of ended in Assen as she crashed out of Race 1 and had to sit out Race 2 due to injuries. Later in the season she also proved to be less consistent than Herrera and Neila, leaving her title hopes to a more mature and more experienced 2027 season.
Muklada Sarapuech is the real pleasant surprise this year. Entering Portimao as just a wild card, the Thai rider finished both races that weekend in the points. When she came back for more racing the next round, she also came back for better results. Challenging for podium positions since Assen, Muklada finally stood on the podium in Race 2 in Misano, and repeated it in Race 1 in Donington Park. Can we expect even more from Muklada next season as she will have more time to prepare in the winter and have a more well-rounded campaign? Yes please, pretty please, with a cherry on top.
Chloe Jones and Lucie Boudesseul were both able to give us hope of a more crowded title fight. It was just that both riders were rookies last year, and only found their footing in the second half of the 2025 season, a bit too late for the title fight in the season, and then this season, different circumstances prevented them from delivering their best performances. Let’s hope they bounce back next season.
Why do we want to spice it up? It’s down to this question: Do you like the 2026 WorldSBK season where Nicolò Bulega won 21 out of the 24 races (not counting the superpole races) with the only other rider able to win races being his teammate Iker Lecuona, or the 2026 MotoGP season where the top 8 riders in the standings have all been able to win at least one Grand Prix (not counting the Sprint) and they are on three different bikes from six different teams?
Different people will have different preferences between the two real scenarios above. It’s just as laid out above, WorldWCR looks a lot more like its sister series WorldSBK than MotoGP, especially considering that WorldWCR is a single-make series. We need more names involved in the title fight, and we need real threats presented to Maria Herrera.
Again, This Should Be The Stepping Stone
The bigger question than who can challenge Maria Herrera in her quest to defend the title again next season is, what championship can we graduate Maria into?
We all love Maria, but WorldWCR is not MotoGP. This championship should be a stepping stone for champions or even top-5 riders to go to WorldSSP, WorldSBK, Moto2, MotoGP. A rider can retire in MotoGP. A rider shouldn’t win five consecutive WorldWCR titles and then retire in WorldWCR.
As mentioned above, Nicolò Bulega completely dominated the WorldSBK season, yet he still has a place to graduate into – MotoGP, just like the guy who dominated the championship before him! So why can’t we find Maria Herrera a competitive enough bike or attractive enough deal in WorldSSP or Moto2?
The question is not about whether Maria Herrera has ambitions to go racing in a higher championship. When she was a little girl beating Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Quartararo, she dreamed about being in MotoGP. It was just that, after not being given opportunities throughout the years, she learned that there’s probably not a competitive enough bike for her in other championships, and that fact has not changed since she became WorldWCR Champion.
This goes back to why WorldWCR and other female-only championships were created in the first place: are you just carving out a small playground for the girls to play in so they will stay out of the guys’ way, or are you creating more opportunities for women to race so they can learn and compete with guys later?
Looking ahead into The CFMOTO Era
This is a curveball move from CFMOTO. As they released many media campaigns around their new CFMOTO V4 SR-RR, many suspected that they aimed to enter WorldSBK with that machine and a factory team. Not to say that this is not on their agenda in the future, but what comes first in this paddock is their contract as the new exclusive motorcycle supplier for WorldWCR. CFMOTO 675SR-R will be the WorldWCR machine from 2027 to 2029.
This change can obviously spice up the championship as well. After racing the Yamaha R7 for three years in WorldWCR, those who have been with the championship longer have a clear upper hand over the rookies. With CFMOTO 675SR-R, on the other hand, no previous single-make series was available in Europe. Even though selected teams entered the machine in national championships, and WorldWCR teams can purchase production bikes and WorldWCR-spec racing parts during the winter, no WorldWCR riders had previous experience racing this machine prior to Portimao next year.
This will make it more of a level playing field for those who have been here for three years and the rookies.
So, Maria Herrera started her journey to defend her title again this week. Beatriz Neila and Paola Ramos will most definitely go at it again to stop her. Who can we expect to be the fourth and fifth names in the mix of the title fight? We will find out in March 2027 in Portimao.
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