Portimao’s test days ahead of Round 2 of the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship are in the books, and Ducati independent rider Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team) looks like he is making progress as he gets his sophomore year underway in WorldSBK. On the heels of his best-ever performance at Phillip Island - A P5 in the Tissot Superpole Race, followed by a P6 in Race 2 – Sam Lowes kept his forward momentum as he finished both days right around the top 10 positions.

Rainy weather limited try track time for the grid’s riders across both days, In Day 1, overnight rain left the track wet well into the morning, and in Day Two, rain begin to fall around the hour break between morning and afternoon sessions, largely ruling out the afternoon. Rain or not, Sam Lowes put on two strong performances across the pair of days, finishing both days P9. This upcoming Round 2 will be the #14’s first race weekend at Portimao, and if he is able to build on these results in testing, he may be a dark horse rider to keep an eye on.

On his experience in testing, Lowes said, “It was good! I felt ok on the bike today, we’re making good improvements day by day with the race configuration. Rather than testing new parts, we’re testing different settings with suspension and other things with different race tires so that was the main thing. Unfortunately, only 50 laps today and similar in Day 1 so still not the ideal test, we didn’t get as many laps as we normally would.”

Lowes has never raced at Portimao as Superbike rider, however that is far from saying he goes into Portimao without experience on track, in his five years in WorldSupersport before his move to Moto2™, he raced at Portimao, and in fact, back his last race at Portimao in WorldSSP back in 2013, he won. More recently, in Moto2™ he has also enjoyed success at Portimao, landing a P3 podium in 2020 as well as a P7 in 2023.

Looking ahead to the Pirelli Portuguese Round, Sam Lowes said, “We have the race weekend in two weeks, so it was important to get the work done, I’d say things are positive, my pace on race tires is pretty ok. We still have some area to improve but things are looking positive ahead of the race weekend and I feel like we can do a good job. I feel like we’ve done a good test and we’ve analyzed well what we needed to and from here there’s still plenty we can learn from looking at the data and the video footage. Overall it was positive, no drama and a big thank you to the team for a great job, now a week off then back to it!”

Follow Sam Lowes and the rest of the WorldSBK Grid in the upcoming Portuguese round over the weekend of March 28-30^th! Catch the action live or whenever you want with full session uploads with the WorldSBK VideoPass!