to match it at Estoril. Qualifying seventh, he would be disappointed to have dropped to 12th in Race One. Ninth in the Sprint Race and 10th in Race Two meant points from all three races so that’ s two rounds in a row where Dixon has scored in all races and, focusing on the positives, Honda is climbing back into the game at last.
YAMAHA Yamaha, the benchmark that Honda would likely test themselves against, had another stressful weekend. Vierge, to be replaced by MotoGP’ s Jack Miller for 2027, top-scored with 13 points, just one more than Dixon. Andrea Locatelli had a shocker and came away with no points. Vierge, dropped by the team for 2027, and going to Barni Ducati( which is a fabulous consolation prize), is just 10 points behind Loka in the championship and would no doubt like to finish as top Yamaha rider.
KAWASAKI For Kawasaki, Garrett Gerloff didn’ t have a bad weekend but, finding himself locked in midfield battles, was not able to force his way into the top five. Just out of the top 10 in qualifying, he made no progress in Race One, went backwards in the Sprint Race and did well to convert 13th on the grid into a top 10 in Race Two. Whilst it’ s a little counterintuitive that the Kawa-powered Bimotas are performing better than the actual Kawa’ s, it’ s worth noting that Gerloff is ahead of every Yamaha, BMW and Honda in the championship and is riding the only‘ real’ Kawa in the field and can’ t learn from comparative data from other teams, so the results he and the team achieve deserve respect.
KIWI RIDER 103