Grand Prix veteran Efren Vazquez has been retired from full-time racing for nearly a decade, however he nonetheless performed a task on this 12 months’s WorldSSP300 Championship.
The 2025 World Supersport 300 Championship was received by 17-year-old Benato Fernandes driving Kobe. This was a primary title for Kobe, and by extension for China (sure, David Alonso received the 2024 Moto3 title in one thing known as CFMoto, however primarily a rebranded KTM, and the Kobe 321RR was designed and constructed by Kobe himself), and for the younger Spaniard, who is said by birthplace to the aforementioned two-time Moto3 Grand Prix winner Vázquez, each of Basque descent. area.
Vázquez was in Fernandes’ nook in 2025, taking part in a task the Spanish teenager calls “tremendous vital” in successful his final WorldSSP300 title.
“He (Vazquez) taught me self-discipline, exhausting work, staying calm and sticking to a routine,” Benato Fernandez advised WorldSBK.com at EICMA.
“I believe that is the important thing to success.
“I believe that is crucial factor in a race: to not get distracted and go in a special course. In order that was actually vital.”
Fernandez’s velocity was one thing of a shock to him in 2025, his rookie season within the 300m championship. Nonetheless, it was evident from the beginning, taking pole place and successful Race 2 of the opening spherical at Portimao.
“My aim was to provide 100% in each race, however I by no means imagined I’d be capable of arrive on the first race and win,” he stated.
“All in all, it was season. I felt actually good on the bike from the start of the 12 months, so I pushed exhausting and achieved it, however I couldn’t have imagined that I’d have already got received the primary race.”
“It most likely wasn’t a mixture that might win a world championship.”
The Group 109 crew, which Fernandes joined in 2025, is its first 12 months as a Kobe crew and had been working Kawasaki machines the earlier 12 months.
Though the crew was capable of tackle the earlier 12 months’s manufacturing facility 321RR bikes, there was restricted manufacturing facility help through the season.
Fernandes, a one-rider effort, was the crew’s sole focus all season, however for crew principal Paul Tobin, the mixture of crew, rider and bike was not essentially one which regarded on the skin as more likely to win the championship initially of the season.
“It has been a very nice 12 months,” Tobin advised WorldSBK.com at EICMA.
“Because the starting of the 12 months with Cove’s bikes and Benato (Fernandes), our crew has turn into an Irish crew with younger Basque riders and Chinese language producers.
“For individuals on the skin, this mix most likely wasn’t going to win a world championship.
“However from the primary spherical, when Benato had his first session and received superpole, we already knew he was quick. Then we received the second race in Portimao to construct momentum, and that momentum has been unbelievable all 12 months lengthy.
“Profitable the championship within the last race of the Supersport 300 World Championship was a dream come true for us, however after we discuss to different individuals who watch the game they are saying it was essentially the most unbelievable ending to a championship they’ve ever seen.
“All of it will depend on Benato’s racing method and talent to do what he did within the last nook at Jerez.”
