Dunlop reveals dramatic 2025 bike switch on eve of first race

Michael Dunlop has finally revealed what bike he will ride in the 2025 road racing season, only hours before taking to the track for the first time in anger at the North West 200.

The most successful Isle of Man TT racer of all time will ditch the Honda machine he raced last year in the superbike class and instead follow rivals Davey Todd and Peter Hickman onto BMWs.

Dunlop’s no stranger to BMW machinery after previously racing the S1000RR back in 2019 and winning both the Superbike and Senior TT in 2014, becoming the first person to win a TT on a BMW since Georg Meier in 1939.

His BMWs back in 2014 - and in 2016 when he repeated the Superbike-Senior double -  were prepared for him by long-time partner Hawk Racing, which he will once again team up with in 2025, as well as running his own MD Racing BMW in the superstock class.

The switch comes as something of a surprise given his success on the Honda in recent years - and amid the normal secrecy that surrounds Dunlop's plans.

He's managed to make sure that he's had plenty of time on the BMW this year so far after riding one for Team LRP Poland at the Le Mans 24 Hour race in April.

He crashed out of the race in treacherous conditions, and admitted afterwards that he got lucky to walk away relatively unscathed from that fall.

"I'm not too bad, just a few bumps and bruises...black and blue one side and black and blue the other side," Dunlop told BBC Sport NI that weekend.

"Whatever way I landed, I got a bit of a doing but my suit and helmet did a great job. I'm black and blue from the impact but no broken bones."

Dunlop will also make a dramatic switch in the supersport class, ditching his long relationship with Yamaha’s R6 to instead turn to Italian machinery and campaign Ducati’s V2 Panigale under the Milwaukee name.

Davey Todd rode the supersport Ducati to two podium finishes last year behind double race winner Dunlop in the class, but Todd will return to Honda power and the Padgetts team for 2025.

With the new supersport next-gen rules introduced by the FIM altering the balance of the class somewhat, Dunlop has finally made the move away from Japanese machinery in the class where he’ll be hoping to increase his unmatched record of 13 wins.

The Ducati running under the branding of power tool company Milwaukee, will be prepared by long-established Northern Irish team TAS Racing, which last ran Dunlop at the TT in 2019 when he last rode a BMW machine.

Though only confirming on the eve of the NW200 that he would switch from Yamaha, he nonetheless completed an extensive winter testing programme on the Ducati, including an impressive top 10 finish at the Daytona 200 in March.

But while the TT might be the focus of Dunlop’s road racing campaign, he’ll first run the new bikes at this weekend’s North West 200, where the first race action kicks off on Thursday evening, with Dunlop set to start the three superbike, supersport and supersport races from the second row.