Locatelli Bimota better seen this year and both riders commended the other on how intense, but fair, the battle was. Which also suggests that perhaps Surra’ s earlier mistakes were signs of inexperience rather than aggression.
YAMAHA GETS FUEL BOOST Whilst Ducati had their fuel flow trimmed, Yamaha were awarded an extra 0.5kg / h ahead of Round Five. Allowing for the baseline at the start of the season and modifications since, Ducati now has 44kg / h and Yamaha has 47kg / h which in theory should give them quite a boost in performance. In practical terms, it made little difference at Auodrom Most with the Yamaha contingent, Locatelli and Vierge for the factory team, Gardner and Manzi for GYTR GTR, only able to muster three top ten finishes between them with Loka’ s eighth and ninth in Races One and Two being the highlight.
THE BIMOTA BOYS In the Kawasaki-engined Bimota camp, Axel Bassani had a much better outing than his non-points-scoring Round Four. Qualifying in fifth and converting that to a fifth place finish showed some of what he’ s capable of but thirteenth in the Sprint race gave him a poor grid position for Race Two so he wasn’ t able to fully capitalise on his good start to the weekend although he did convert an eleventh place grid position into an eight place finish. Round Five was his best weekend of the 2026 season since Round One at Phillip Island and hopefully it marks a return to form that he can carry forward to Round Six. On the other side of the garage, Alex Lowes showed, once again, that qualifying poorly really messes up your weekend. Fifteenth on the grid gave him a huge amount of work to do but he was up for it and converted it into seventh in Race One and ninth in the
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