The 2025 WorldSBK Championship reaches the halfway stage this weekend, with chapter six taking Sam Lowes and the Elf Marc VDS Racing Team to the holiday hot spot of Italy’s Adriatic coast for the Emilia Romagna round

Lowes can’t wait to jump back on his Ducati Panigale V4R machine after finishing in a strong fourth position at the end of a successful two-day test at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli last month.

With gloriously sunny and hot conditions expected throughout the weekend, Lowes takes to the track for the first time on Friday morning at 1035am local time for the 45-minute FP1 session.

Lowes arrives in Misano with big expectations after he completed 159 laps of vital preparation work recently at the 4.22km track, which included fine tuning chassis and electronic settings.

Adding to his high level of optimism is the brilliant performance he produced during the last round at the Most track in the Czech Republic where Lowes bagged three superb top six finishes to claim his best weekend points tally in WorldSBK to date.

Sweltering heat in the Emilia Romagna round 12 months ago made the weekend a challenging one for the Briton, who came away with a best result of 13^th position.

Results so far in 2025 have already proven that Lowes comes into this weekend ready to pose a much stronger threat at a venue where he took one of his 10 victories in the Moto2 World Championship in 2021 from pole position.

With seven top six finishes in the last eight races in 2025, Lowes is in determined mood to fight for a second podium finish of the campaign to give himself the perfect boost before his home round at Donington Park in mid-July.

“I’d love to be battling for the podium”

“I absolutely love racing in Italy and can’t wait for this weekend. It is the home round for Ducati and the fans are really passionate and I’ve had some great times there with a Moto2 win in the past. It is like a second home race for me, and it is nice to go to a track where I’ve raced at a lot in the past. That experience certainly helps and obviously I was able to perform well at the test recently which makes me confident we can have a strong weekend. We did a lot of laps to get prepared as best as possible for this and I felt we made another step forward with the bike. My race results of late have been strong as well, so I feel we have the potential to make another step and try and be part of the battle for the podium and be closer to that leading group.”