The opening race action in the penultimate round of the 2026 WorldSBK Championship ended with Elf Marc VDS Racing Team rider Sam Lowes just missing out on a hard-earned top 10 finish 

Firing away from the fourth row of the grid, Lowes pushed forward into seventh spot before taking the chequered flag in 11th to collect five important World Championship points.

Sunday’s race action gets underway with the Superpole showdown at 1110am local time and will be followed by the full distance Race 2 at 1530pm.

^{// SAM LOWES: Superpole: 10th, Race 1: 11th}

Saturday’s action commenced with the third and final Free Practice session of the weekend and Lowes reeled off a series of sub 1:36 laps on his way to recording the 13th quickest time.

A 1:35.642 demonstrated positive steps forward for Lowes and his Ducati Panigale V4R package, with his best time in FP3 an improvement by half-a-second compared to his pace on Friday.

Lowes stepped up his speed again in the decisive Superpole session and he lapped Estoril some 0.7s faster to qualify at the head of the fourth row of the grid in 10th place with a best lap of 1:34.995.

The Briton made an aggressive start to the 21-lap Race 1 and immediately jumped up three places from his starting slot into a strong seventh.

Lowes held a top 10 spot until the penultimate lap when he slipped back to 11th, with the five points earned keeping him fifth overall in the standings.

“The gap to be fighting for the top 6 is not so far and that can be the goal tomorrow”

“I’m obviously struggling this weekend, struggling to find the rhythm and the feeling. I’m not really unhappy with the race because that was the pace I’ve had all weekend, so it was the job I needed to do to get some information for tomorrow. I tried at the beginning, I realised I didn’t have the speed and just brought the bike home. I’ve just not got it figured out yet and obviously everybody’s pushing hard and doing a good job, I need to understand a bit more and ride a little bit better.. The gap to be fighting for the top 6 is not so far and that can be the goal tomorrow if we can make some steps forward.”