Although Bobby Fong isn’t looking for anyone’s pity, it’s hard not to feel for the Californian when you look back to the final round of the 2025 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship. In fact, fan or no fan, if you don’t feel at least a little bit bad for Fong, you may want to check your pulse.

Fong went into the New Jersey Motorsports Park tripleheader with an eight-point lead. After a win on Saturday, that lead was up to what looked like an insurmountable 13 points. But, a day later, everything fell apart with Fong crashing out of both races and falling to third in the championship behind Cameron Beaubier and Josh Herrin.  

Simply put, it was a nightmare.

“I’m not saying this just to be like pity me or anything, but with the championship, and you can ask Cameron (Beaubier) or (Herrin), it weighs on you a lot throughout the end of the year,” Fong said. “When people say, ‘I’m not worried about the championship,’ they are. Especially with Yamaha, Richard (team owner Stanboli), and stuff like that. The pressure was high. I just felt like from COTA to New Jersey… even before COTA, I felt like I was living out of body. It was weird. Everything in that championship consumed me. Then when I lost it, I didn’t even know how to feel. I couldn’t really process it. I really still haven’t processed it, to be completely honest.”

Fong, however, was back on the horse in a hurry after the disastrous finale at NJMP with the Attack Performance Progressive Yamaha Racing team heading to Europe for back-to-back World Superbike rounds in Portugal and Spain. To add insult to injury, the results weren’t good.

 “To go to World Superbike and try to have a good time, which is a chance of a lifetime, and then just to get the sh*& kicked out of you each session and each day… and the harder you try, you just go backwards because it’s so different, that was really, really tough mentally. It was three weekends in a row of just getting rocked. It was tough for me. It’s like everything I’ve ever learned on how to go fast in the U.S. on Dunlops, Superbikes, and everything else, it doesn’t translate there whatsoever. It is the complete opposite of everything.”

Fong and the team were confident of doing well in the two rounds at Portimao and Jerez, but reality came in the form of more stomach punches.

“It was three weekends in a row of just getting rocked. It was tough for me.” – Bobby Fong

“I was really excited to go to World Superbike,” Fong said. “No matter what, I wanted to go over there. When people say it’s difficult to go over there and compete if you’ve never been there before, it makes it seem so simple with the different tires because ‘it’s just more grip.’ I can’t tell you to the extreme how hard it really is, and it’s not because the riders are better. There’s really only two people who really stood out where I was like, ‘these guys actually have something special,’ and those two were Toprak (Razgatlioglu) and (Nicolo) Bulega. Nothing against the other guys, but it wasn’t like, ‘These guys are better.’ They just maximized their packages. It was cool to go there, but to get your sh7% pushed in after just losing the championship was really tough mentally.”

Fong is doing his best to look to the future and not dwell on the past, but it’s not an easy task. What he needs to focus on is the fact that he won six MotoAmerica Superbike races over the course of the season, with 14 total podiums in the 20-race season.

“When I say it out loud, as much as I want to be positive, I do not remember those wins,” Fong said. “Losing sticks out way more than anything I’ve ever done. Just me being real with you on how I feel inside. I’ve got to be better next year. To be a realist, it’s going to be pretty stacked with a lot of Ducatis and BMWs and stuff out there. I know we’ll be up front, but we’ve definitely have to step up our game a little bit.”

To close the book on talking about the 2025 finale in New Jersey, Fong was asked one more question: If he could turn back time to September in New Jersey and make some changes, what would they be?

“I wouldn’t change race three whatsoever,” Fong said. “Race three I would not change at all. I was racing to win, and I wanted to check out, no matter at what cost. Richard (Stanboli) told me, because at the end of the day we were on our back foot, he was like, ‘You need to win this race, or you crash it.’ Well, I ended up crashing it. I was riding more emotionally, but I wouldn’t change it. I wanted to win, and I didn’t want to win by a little margin. So, I was doing everything I could to pull away, and I just made a mistake. I just went in there a little hot. I wouldn’t change race three whatsoever. Crashing or not, I wouldn’t change it. I would still ride the same way. I knew I had at the end-of-the-race pace, and I feel like I usually do. But I wouldn’t change race three. Race two, at the end of the day, I should have been more aware of my surroundings, and I wasn’t. I should have expected things, and I didn’t. I didn’t expect things like that. At the end of the day, I should have been more aware of my surroundings. I lost the championship because I wasn’t. Lesson learned for sure.”

Fong’s off-season started recently with a two-day test at the Podium Club in Arizona. The reason for the test was two-fold. It was a chance to get Fong back on his Yamaha YZF-R1, and two days for Strack Racing’s Mathew Scholtz to reunite himself with a Yamaha Superbike in preparation for the two-time MotoAmerica Supersport Champion’s return to the class in 2026. If nothing else, the test also showed that basically everything the team learned from the World Superbike trip wasn’t useful at home.

“Having the test originally started with Mathew (Scholtz), because Strack wanted him to get on the bike before the first of the year,” Fong said. “Then Richard (Stanboli) was like, ‘we possibly could have a test on these days. We could probably get some stuff ready to ride. Do you want to go ride and get seat time and work on some stuff, and I could have some stuff to try?’ I was like, ‘yeah.’ So, we had different suspension stuff that we learned at World Superbike, which was definitely not even close to working here at all. In the simplest way, it’s everything that riding-wise, setup-wise, electronics-wise, everything how we go fast here in America, is the complete opposite over there. It is night and day different. So, we had some European stuff to try, like valving and suspension. We tried an updated swingarm, which I couldn’t really tell too much on. So just a little different stuff, and then to get Mathew on the bike as well.”

“I was racing to win, and I wanted to check out, no matter at what cost.” – Bobby Fong

Things have changed with 2026 MotoAmerica Championship looming in the not-so-distant future, and the biggest news thus far is six-time champion Cameron Beaubier moving to the Warhorse HSBK Ducati Flo4Law team. Fong doesn’t scare easily, but the thought of racing Beaubier on a Ducati concerns him.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people, who have good sources, that the new Ducati is a big step up on last year’s,” Fong said. “It’s a worry that it could be a landslide with Cameron (Beaubier) on that bike. I think Richard is trying to work on some stuff. No matter what, they’ve still got to make that Ducati work on our tracks, which isn’t a simple task. And that’s speaking from experience of going there (World Superbike) to here. But if they get that thing working, and we don’t get any concessions, it’s going to be a lot of trying 110 percent each lap to try to stay close. But again, there’s been races where we’ve been really, really good, but when we get to places like COTA and Road America… those are going to landslides, unless we can get some concessions.

“Honestly, at the end of the day, Richard (Stanboli) does the work and he’s doing the best we can. We definitely may need MotoAmerica’s help to try to help us a little bit for next year. It was close last year, but this year, if the Ducatis get better, the BMW is better… we know the new Ducati is going to be better and now with Cameron (Beaubier) on that thing, it’s going to be even that much better.”