and rides it well. The Sprint Race had seen a resurgence for Montella’ s teammate Alvaro Bautista who is also pondering what’ s likely to be his final season in WorldSBK. Qualifying in 12th, Bautista had made it through to ninth in Race One, but fared even better in the ten-lap Sprint Race where a little bit of the old Bautista magic saw him make his way through to fifth at the finish. Surra and Oliveira repeated their results from Race One with Surra taking out third with Oliveira less than two tenths behind. The speed of the BMW on the straight is something to behold( 324km / h for Oliveira v 316km / h for Surra) but anyone who saw season 2025 will know, it was Toprak Razgatlioglu’ s performance under brakes that often made all the difference. Oliveira doesn’ t quite have the same level of ridiculous braking control so can’ t easily translate the extra oomph in a straight line into passes against a rider of Surra’ s quality in the corners.
RACE TWO An early misjudgement from Oliveira dropped him to 14th. He fought back with some particularly impressive overtakes, passing Alex Lowes and Garrett Gerloff in one move and then repeating the feat to take Baldassarri and Xavi Vierge but he faded towards the end and dropped back to eighth at the finish. This was still his best points score since Portimao in March, so there were some positives to take away from Estoril. Surra completed his best weekend of the season landing another third-place finish making it three podiums from three starts, although that final podium was somewhat gifted to him by Bautista. Bautista’ s fifth place in the Sprint gave him a second row start in Race Two and he looked well on the way to a podium finish only to crash out from third. His obvious despair was only matched by that of team principal Marco Barnabo who’ s seen his riders hit the ground
98 KIWI RIDER