holes in the team’ s repairs budget, wasting valuable points by crashing. Coming to Magny-Cours, Montella could only have been denied third in the championship by Bimota’ s Alex Lowes who was most likely to take it away from him and, if the Barni Spark rider was going to be denied the independent riders’ championship, it was Alex’ s brother Sam on the MarcVDS Ducati who was his closest challenger. Sam kicked off with second fastest in qualifying, edging Lecuona back to third, whilst Alex put himself on row two beside Montella and Alberto Surra. In Race One, Montella lost out to both the Lowes brothers, with Sam taking out third and Alex fourth. Whilst Alex wasn’ t quite so strong in the Sprint Race, brother Sam looked set for another podium, behind the Aruba. it men, until he threw it away on the last lap and gifted Montella third-place. Sam’ s Sprint Race DNF meant 10th on the grid for Race Two and, as has been the case when he’ s been caught in traffic early in a race, he wasn’ t able to fight his way out of it and could only finish eleventh. Despite starting from second row on the grid for Race Two, Alex was only able to bring it home in 13th, this after a fifth-place finish in the Sprint Race. The Lowes’ brothers’ Race Two disappointments were in sharp contrast to Montella’ s mature and controlled third place finish. Montella’ s weekend haul of 36 points to Sam Lowes’ 21 and Alex Lowes’ 19 means he extended his lead over both, leading Alex in the main game by 46 points and Sam, in the independent rider’ s championship, by 49. Not unassailable, but a healthy buffer with three rounds left. Montella’ s teammate, Bautista, possibly staring down the barrel of an exit from WorldSBK at the end of 2027, had another
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