Sam Lowes frustrated by Portimao WorldSBK test weather, but “positive” ahead of race

Last weekend’s Portimao WorldSBK test was a “positive” one for Marc VDS’s Sam Lowes, who focused on trying new settings, rather than new components.

Lowes was among the Ducatis that dominated the opening World Superbike round of 2025 at Phillip Island, finishing in the top-six in both Sunday races, but coming back to Europe and a more ordinary layout such as Portimao’s will be an opportunity to see more accurately how the field stacks up.

Lowes was ninth-fastest on day two of the test, and the last of the riders to lap in the 1:40s.

But race pace, rather than ultimate lap time, was what had Lowes encouraged in spite of disrupted running due to intermittent rain on both days.

“It was good,” Lowes told WorldSBK summarily.

“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 added, though, that, despite the disrupted test, he is still optimistic about the upcoming race in Portimao.

“We have the race weekend in two weeks, so it was important to get the work done,” he said.

“I'd say things are positive, my pace on race tires is pretty ok. We still have some areas 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.”