It was another rough weekend for Yamaha. The GYTR GRT boys, Gardner and Manzi, both outscored the factory riders, Locatelli and Vierge. Manzi was their top scorer, but six points doesn’ t get you far in this series. Michael van der Mark’ s two points scoring finishes, an 11th and 10th in the full length races were all BMW got out of the weekend( VDM would have better fortune the weekend following Aragon. Sharing riding duties with Markus Reiterberger and Steven Odendaal, VDM and the BMW Motorrad team won at the 8 Hours of Spa Motos, Round Two of the FIM Endurance World Championship). Hannes Soomer had a nightmare of a weekend, out of the points in every race and falling in both full length races although he did remount and finish, a long way back, in Race Two. For Honda, Chantra scored a point in each of the full-length races, Dixon scored none.
NEXT TIME OUT Onto Misano. Bulega hasn’ t got his hands on the title yet but he’ s probably already thinking about where the trophy will look nice in his house. 108 points ahead of your nearest rival is a big, although not insurmountable, lead. Lecouna has an even bigger gap on his nearest rival, Sam Lowes. Montella and Balda had been sitting third and fourth coming into Aragón but crashes by both of them, and strong performances from the Lowes brothers, meant that not only did Sam move up into third but Alex also climbed to fourth with just ten points separating them. The Aruba. it guys might be long gone but behind them, things are tight with just 25 points covering Sam Lowes, Alex Lowes, Montella and Baldassarri. Third in the series will likely be one of these guys with Bassani as a very outside bet. Surra and Gerloff will have to work out of their skins to catch this group. WorldSBK 2026 has had a lot of ups and downs already, so there’ s a lot of odd, but plausible, outcomes from the second half of the season.
KIWI RIDER 93