Toprak takes his 20th race win of the season to extend his championship lead

The WorldSBK championship is at the Portuguese circuit of Estoril for the penultimate round of the championship. Danilo Petrucci and Britain’s Sam Lowes were both ruled unfit to compete in the Estoril round, Danilo had a hand injury, whilst Sam was suffering with a chest contusion.

Qualifying got under way with Toprak Razgatlioglu leading the way from the off, the BMW rider took his sixth pole position of the 2025 season with an all-new-time lap record of 1:34.203. Joining Toprak on the front row of the grid was Nicolo Bulega and his team-mate Alvaro Bautista, this was Bautista’s first front row start from Superpole of the 2025 season.

Lights out at the Estoril circuit as Bulega lead the field into turn one. Disaster at turn one, four riders went down! A few chaotic corners which lead to the red flag coming out.

The race was restarted over 20 laps. Bautista got the holeshot into turn one, Toprak got pushed back to fifth place. Bautista was leading from Bulega, Jonathan Rea was in the mix running in fourth place.

Toprak elbowed Bulega out the way for second place, the Turkish rider then went on to pass Bautista to lead the race.

After three laps Toprak stretched out his lead at the front of the field. Iker Lecuona crashed out at turn three. Rea and his team-mate Andrea Locatelli were battling for fourth place.

With 13 laps to go things were heating up between Bautista and Rea, the fight was on for the final podium spot. Alex Lowes was in fifth place also in the podium finish hunt.

Bulega was catching Toprak with ten laps to go, the gap was just over a second. Two laps later the Ducati was right with Toprak, Bautista managed to get away from Rea as the Yamaha rider was coming under pressure from Alex Lowes.

Toprak controlled the race, keeping the gap between himself and his championship rival Bulega, Bautista was in a comfortable third place, Locatelli passed Lowes for fourth place.

Toprak crossed the finish line to take his 20th victory of the season, Bulega was second, Bautist finished in third place, another podium finish for the Spaniard, Locatelli hung onto fourth place, Alex lowes was fifth.

Toprak now has a 41 point lead in the championship standings, two more chances tomorrow for Bulega to close the points gap down.

Featured Image: WorldSBK.