way more often than he would have liked this season. You have to feel for Bautista, he’ s one of the greats and he’ s still a formidable rider, but WorldSBK is unforgiving, it forces riders to ride close to the edge lap after lap and overstepping is all too easy. What of Montella and the Lowes twins in Race Two? This was where the real Yari Montella stood up, converting 11th on the grid into an impressive fourth. Behind him, Sam Lowes finished his dismal weekend with a 15th whilst Alex crashed out on lap six. Despite Montella’ s very messy weekend, he extended his lead over Alex Lowes to 53 points so, with 62 on offer at the final Jerez round, third place overall is all but assured, unless he has an absolute disaster and Lowes has a blinder. More consequential was that Montella increased his lead over Sam Lowes to 65 points and that was it, game over, Montella took out the independent rider title which means Barni
Spark Racing won both best independent team and best independent rider award for 2026. That should help Marco forget the repair bills … at least until the next round. GoEleven’ s Lorenzo Baldassarri had an efficient, rather than a spectacular, weekend but it was the fourth round in a row he’ s scored more than 20 points and, in that time, he’ s only failed to score in one race. He still has work to do on his qualifying performance as a couple of tenths improvement would see him on the second rather than the third row of the grid but sixth in both full-length races and ninth in the Sprint Race were fair results. He seemed to be having more trouble than usual getting past the Bimotas at this round.
HONDA In the Honda camp, Somkiat Chantra has been confirmed to stay onboard with Jake Dixon for 2027 and Dixon, who’ d had such a positive outing at Cremona, wasn’ t quite able
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