Peter Hickman confirms 8TEN Racing team won't return to British Superbike Championship - 'The BSB ship has sailed'

In June, Hickman – who co-owns the team with Davey Todd – confirmed the team was pulling out of the remainder of the 2026 championship.

At the time, the 14-time TT winner cited the “differences in bike spec”, with the BMW M1000RR struggling in BSB trim against rival manufacturers such as Ducati and Yamaha.

Hickman has instead competed in different races this season, making his debut at Oliver’s Mount in Scarborough, entering the Southern 100 at Billown for the first time and riding at Chimay in Belgium in the European Series Road Racing Championship.

Team-mate Todd missed most of this year through injury after a crash at the Daytona 200 in March, but joined Hickman on the grid at the Gold Cup races at Oliver’s Mount earlier this month.

Appearing on the Outside Line podcast, hosted by Jack Burnicle and James Whitham, Hickman confirmed 8TEN Racing was finished in the British Superbike Championship.

“I think the BSB ship has sailed for us, even for 8TEN as a whole,” he said.

“It [BSB regulations] just doesn’t work in the way it’s meant to work and it’s not helped in the way it should have helped, and we felt like we weren’t getting the help we needed.

“We’re not talking about financial support because with what we get from BMW and Monster, and all our sponsors – LEW – they’ve been fantastic.

“[I’m talking about] regulations help, and I’m not going to go into all of it, but how some manufacturers get certain help: the BMW has never won a BSB championship, has never won consistently and doesn’t get anything, any help at all, yet there’s other manufacturers that got concessions and help and they’re winning races a lot.

“You just kind of think it doesn’t quite correlate.”

Asked specifically if his team was “done with BSB”, Hickman replied: “Yes, one hundred per cent, unfortunately, which is a shame because I’ve been in the BSB paddock for 23 years, I’ve loved all of it and I still miss it now: I miss the racing – I don’t miss the politics – I miss racing with my mates and racing on these great circuits like Oulton Park and Cadwell.”

Hickman also confirmed he will race at the Macau Motorcycle Grand Prix in southern China in November, where he finished as the runner-up in 2025 behind Todd on his road racing comeback after a huge crash in qualifying at the TT.

The 39-year-old has won the famous race four times and will be a leading contender once more for the victory spoils.

“Yes, I will be in Macau this year and I should be a bit fitter than last year when I went,” Hickman added.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to win four times there and if I’ve finished, which I’ve done every year apart from my first year that I went: I never even got to race in my first year because we had a water leak on the bike and we crashed, luckily I was alright, but we wrote the bike off, so I never got to race in Macau in 2014.

“I’ve had a pretty good record at Macau to be fair but yeah, I’ll be back at Macau.”