WSBK Portugal - A Masterclass in Portimao

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 831, a master class in Portimao. We're recording this on Tuesday the 31st of March.

I'm your host Carl Hunn and joining me this evening is my co-host Danny Smith. In this show, Danny and I will report on the latest race action from round two of World Superbikes in Portugal. Well, before we start talking about the race action, Danny, how are you doing? Yeah, good, Carl. You?

Yeah, good, mate. Thanks. Good. Anything bike related happened since the last podcast? I've polished it.

It's still sat in the garage and still waiting for me to recover from the shoulder surgery. I need to do an oil change on it, but apart from that, there's not a lot I can do at the minute. What about you? Yeah, it's funny you should mention oil change because shortly after our last podcast, I thought I've got another month to go yet until my first track day. So I'll go out and I'll do an oil change on a Tuono.

So I started to warm the bike up just to get the oil out a bit faster and then coolant started leaking down the side of the engine. So, yeah, so luckily I had a month to sort it. So I managed to fix it. The coolant leak is on top of the engine. But yeah, I managed to sort that out.

And my first track day has just been last weekend, last Saturday at Alton Park. So, yeah, good to get back out on track. It's a bit cold. It was dry. It was supposed to be raining on and off, but we had a dry day for the majority of the day.

It hailed just before lunch. But then I must give a shout out to No Limits, the track day organiser. They made a sensible decision because of the hail to call lunch early and actually timed it perfectly well because we had an hour for lunch. In that hour, the sun came out, dried the track again. So everybody was back out on a dry track.

Yeah, it's still bitterly cold, but no elbow down, heroic. It's not going to be that anyway. Good to get the bike ride in. Muscles going again. You don't realise that you've stopped using them until you start using them again.

Yeah, I bet. I just can't wait to get back on mine now. But mine's normal commuting and stuff. Wouldn't mind trying a track day, but maybe that's one thing. We could get all the hosts together.

A bit far for Jim to go, but he likes to travel. Just one thing before we move on to the racing then. Just give a shout out to the supporters that we've got at the minute. Obviously, with this being a free podcast, it does take a bit of money to get to the tracks and things. So any help that can be given is very much appreciated.

You can have a look at motopodcast.com. And on there, there's a couple of links to dip into the pocket and just give anything that you can. So let's start it. So we'll start with a bit of news first before we get into the last weekend's racing. So from the British Superbike side of things, just a couple of news articles to discuss.

First of all, being Nitrous. So Nitrous competitions. This is car rides team, the championship winner from last year. They made a strange announcement or not, but the team itself, the Nitrous team itself, they are actually to miss the Donington test. They're saying that they've got to take the bike to Italy for some support with finishing the bike off.

Obviously, new bike to them. They were running the Yamahas last year and now they're running a Ducati. So I don't think it's anything untoward. I think the internet, the commentary on internet is, oh, they're in trouble, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, they're just being transparent.

They're taking the bike to Ducati course. The finishing touches is what I understand. But Kyle will still attend the test on his own personal Ducati V4R. That BSB official test will take place 3rd and 4th of April. And one other point on Nitrous is car rides actually been interviewed and said he's over the winter.

He's done three and a half thousand miles over the winter of track day riding. That's insane. He said it equates to about 1400 laps of Donington Park. And I've seen it. Kyle's very active on social media and I've seen that he's been posting about a lot of riding in Spain over the winter.

Yeah, I didn't realize it was that much though. And he did actually buy his own Panigale V4R as a training bike. I've just looked up how much that would cost. And with the exhaust he's got on, I think it's just no change out of 50 grand. With no money in BSB.

I think it's definitely an investment in his... Rob, that's what he says in his interview as well. He said he's made the investment in himself to defend the title. Yeah, fair play to him. Fair play to him.

I mean, three and a half thousand miles. That's insane around Donington. If he doesn't smash it out of the park now, then there's no hope, is there? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people who don't even do that a year on a bike. Well, myself included.

So to do three and a half thousand miles over winter on track. Yeah, that's some going. Well done. Yeah, absolutely. What else have we got then?

Just to comment on Honda. When we did the BSB roundup before, I must admit I overlooked this. Jason O'Halloran is actually returning to the BSB paddock this year. He's returning as one of the riders for Honda. And he said it's actually refreshing because he spent last year in World Endurance.

So he was having to ride a compromised bike because they go for a balanced setup between the different riders. So you've got several riders riding the same bike. And he said he's enjoying a bit of a novelty with his bike setup at the Spanish Test because it's being set up exclusively for him. So it's going to be interesting to see Jason O'Halloran back in BSB on the Honda. The only other final piece of news regarding BSB is I noticed that TAS, T-A-S, they've switched to Yamaha R1s from Ducati.

So Rory Skinner was on the Ducati last year and this year they've switched to Yamaha R1s. And I think it was only a one bike team last year with Rory Skinner, but this year they're running Rory Skinner again and also Danny Kent. That's the Cheshire Mouldings Yamaha, isn't it? That one. That's correct.

Yeah, they're the title sponsor for that team, Cheshire Mouldings. Yeah. And then on to the worlds then, I guess. I see you put a bit of news about the tyre that they brought across. Yeah, so Pirelli, they've brought out a new front tyre for World Superbikes.

I must admit, I tried to look into which riders actually used this tyre this year. Sorry, this weekend. I couldn't actually see from the data which riders used it. But they've made several upgrades to their rear tyre, even upgrades in the last round. But this is a new front tyre.

It's a variant of the SC1, the soft option. And I think it's just a construction change, basically. Yeah, I think it doesn't degrade as much over the race, does it? So hopefully these tyres will last the race and the race will be a little bit more competitive. Yeah, obviously Portimao, it's got a lot of elevation changes, hasn't it?

So the stress and the wear on the tyres during the braking is going to be more dependent on the tyre. Yeah, hopefully this will be more particularly suited to the performance of the new tyre. So shall we step into Johnny Ray? Just a couple of points, just a rain on news. But related to the round that we've just seen last weekend is Jake Dixon is still out of injury following that crash in Australia.

Johnny Ray has been brought out of retirement to replace him. So I think the commentator has joked he's got the record for the most amount of World Superbike titles, but he's now also got the record for the shortest retirement in World Superbikes because they've brought him freshly out of retirement. Yeah, and also regarding Honda, Sankat Chandra, so he was injured in the off season and he was unable to compete in Australia, but he's now returned from injury and he was able to race in Portugal at the weekend. Excellent. So do you want to cover the Super Pole qualifying?

I didn't actually watch any qualifying. No, OK. So obviously, as we all expected, Booliga, he set the early tone. He came in with a 139.077 I got written down in the opening runs, but he was bettered by Ica La Cona and he briefly held the new lap record with a 138.637 and that was in the second part of the session. And then obviously Booliga came back out and a 138.495 which was the new Albright record and that took his pole.

And that's obviously the third pole in succession. That was Herra's last year and then Philip Island at round one. So that left the front row of an all Ducati affair, which was Booliga, La Cona and Jari Montella. Olivera was sitting in fourth and he was leading the second row alongside Sam Lowe, who obviously we know is still suffering with that wrist fracture back in Philip Island five weeks ago and Javi Vieje. Shall we hit race one on the Saturday?

Yep, let's do it. Starting grid of Booliga, La Cona, Montella, Olivera, Sam Lowe, Vieje, Alex Lowe, Baldassari, Petrucci and then Vasani. What have you got from this one then, Carl? First of all, just going to mention the track before we get into the racing. Portimao, awesome track.

I've been lucky enough to have two visits there so I've done six days on track at Portimao in total. It looks even better than it looks on TV basically, just a complete roller coaster in the Portuguese sun. Amazing track and when I see these guys racing on it, I just want to go back again to ride on it myself. Moving on from my own feelings, it was just a race one, masterclass by Booliga. He started from the front, stayed at the front, I think he finished two and a half seconds clear.

His teammate, Ica, La Cona, could run with him, as close as he could. In the early laps, as I mentioned, Booliga launched strongly from pole. La Cona quickly got into second place, giving Ducati that 1-2 on the podium. Olivera, he was in front of his own crowd and it's only his second outing on this BMW M1000. He managed to secure third.

He slotted into third relatively early, I think. I think it was from the second lap, so he overtook Alex Lowe in turn one. Then it was pretty much from there onwards he maintained third. That start by Alex Lowe was something else. He jumped straight up into fourth, didn't he?

Alex got an amazing start, but also Montella got a good hole shot at the start as well from that first start. He actually got the hole shot into second place in that first corner, but then he couldn't maintain that position going forward. At lap two to three, I've got Booliga set a 1.40, 1.36 at the start of lap three. Then followed that, taking off 200th of a second, which was obviously an early statement of what he was planning on doing. He had half a second over Montella, who was another half second over La Cona.

Then I think lap five was it. We had Montella going down out of second place. Massive opportunity for him, gone. We've seen how strong he is. That put La Cona up into second and Oliveira up into third.

As soon as that happened, you could hear the crowd. I mean, the atmosphere was pretty phenomenal there, wasn't it? It was 84,000, was it? The highest attendance, I think I read it, is something like since 2013. Hopefully World Superbikes crowd attendance is picking up.

Then still on lap five, Sam Lowe overtook Vieje and took fifth position. Booliga just kept edging away, didn't he? By lap seven, there was a two second buffer over La Cona. Half distance at lap ten, Booliga still around two seconds. Oliveira a second and a half behind La Cona.

Sam Lowe sat in fifth again. Sam has had five fifth positions now. Then there was, I don't know whether you called it, the three way fight for sixth between Bassani, Gerloff and Vieje. Where they were just chopping and changing in position all the time. Couldn't really keep track on who was where.

Then it sort of settled down a bit, didn't it? It was sort of late on in the race that things started to pick up a bit. As you mentioned, just going back a few laps. I think it was lap four or five. I'm sorry to people listening why we say lap four or five.

It's because it's this frustrating thing with World Superbikes where they give you the number of laps to go. They don't actually tell you the number. It was 16 laps to go. Montella crashed out at turn 14, but he was uninjured. He managed to rejoin.

He actually crashed out third place. That put Oliveira up to his podium position. Again, Montella seems to have that speed, but yeah, he's got the speed, but he keeps coming off. So if he can stop coming off, then hopefully he's going to be right at the front with the other guys. Another thing that happened on the same lap was Bautista.

He made a huge mistake going into turn one. He went off onto the track limits. He was trying to pass Gerloff. So yeah, that was really, he really went off the track there. The commentators even commented that they thought he was heading for the town centre in Portimão.

He went off track that much. And then as you mentioned, as the race went on, there was this battle between Gerloff, Bassani and Vieira. I think it was in the last four or five laps that they were having a battle. Gerloff and Bassani actually got the better of Vieira in that five, four laps to go. And it was commentated about how, you know, they're both, well, Gerloff's on the Kawasaki and Bassani's on the Kawasaki powered Bimota.

So the power of that engine seemed to have the better of Vieira's or R1. With two laps remaining, Vieira actually came past Gerloff and Bassani and they couldn't seem to get the same traction out of the corner as Vieira. So it could be that R1 with its different power delivery is able to manage that tyre a bit better. But he did get the better of them in the end with just two laps to go. And then final lap, Nicolo Boulogne takes the flag.

He was two and a half seconds clear of La Cona. Oliver in third, four and a half seconds adrift of the top two. And then Alex Lowe and Sam Lowe's fourth and fifth. Quite tidy from those two. Again, I think they're going to be pretty steady this season.

And then Vieira, Gerloff, Bassani, Bautista in ninth and Petrucci just behind him on the Rocket BMW in tenth. That's Olivera's first world superbike podium at his home race. Crowd went insane. You could hear them. And that's so I've got 82,000 home fans down here.

Do you think that BMW is going to be competitive for the season or is this a home race advantage? Yeah, Olivera definitely did. He did a very good job on that BMW. But it's pretty stark when you think that the same bike or at least last year's version of that bike, I think Top Rat won every race in Portimao last year. So is it that the Cat is now just a superior bike to the BMW?

Is it that the Top Rat magic is missing? I suspect it's a combination of both things. It's also you've got Bollega into the mix. He's extremely talented and he can maximise that Ducati. So it's a good result for BMW.

But again, as I just said, are we missing the Top Rat magic? Is it a match and or is it a match for the Ducati's? We'll have to wait and see. As you mentioned, the Lowe's brothers in fourth and fifth. Sam Lowe's finishing fifth with a broken wrist on that Ducati.

That's amazing. So well done to Sam. Another standout performance was Gerloff, I think, because although he finished seventh, he was actually 13th on the grid. So to come that far forward and at some points he was actually in fifth. So and as I mentioned a few minutes ago, it only seemed to be the tyre management from the R1 that put him back into seventh.

So great performance there from Gerloff as well in race one. Yeah, totally agree. I thought it was a good race. I really did. It was a good weekend all round.

Apart from Bollega. Well, we'll cover that in a bit, won't we? Anything else from that one or should we jump straight into the SuperPole race Sunday morning? No, I'm happy to get to SuperPole. OK, so this is the sprint race that determines the race two grid.

Ten laps and obviously Bollega was at the front and another cracking start from him. Got the whole shot again. But Olivera and Alex Lowe dropping into that first turn. Olivera wasn't letting that one go, was he? He was not letting second place go.

Alex Lowe grabs third from Montella and Laquona just seemed to go backwards. Did he spin up or what happened there? Did you see? No, I don't think he spanned up. I think he just got a bit mobbed going to that first turn.

Yeah, as you mentioned, he did get shuffled back quite a bit. But as we'll see later on in the race, he managed to get back those positions and that finally finishing second behind Bollega. So I've got the lead quartet, Bollega, Olivera, Laquona, Alex Lowe. They seem to create a bit of a gap, didn't they? And Sam had an error on lap two, dropped back into seventh.

He run wide. Yeah, I think he did run wide. I think you're right, Dan. Again, it's understandable fatigue and with that broken wrist. So the top five order was the same as the first race.

As you mentioned, Bollega in first, Laquona in second, Olivera third, Alex for Sam Lowe's fifth. There was a gap between Sam and Alex. Yeah, the Bollega dominance continues. It was a bit boring, really. In fact, Bollega was so far in front, you hardly ever saw him on the TV footage.

Must be a bit disappointing for the sponsors, actually, because although he's winning, he's not actually getting that much coverage. No, I think they put him in a little picture in pictures, didn't they? Top of the screen just to keep an eye on him. But he looked like it was a weekend ride out for him. And then halfway through, so lap five, there was a new lap race record of 139.107.

And then we had two crashes on lap five, half distance, which was, I can never pronounce it, Sofiroglu and Chantra both went out there, didn't they? And that's the one that Chantra got punished for in the next race, I believe. I think that's why he got the long lap penalty. You could see that from lap nine, you could see that tire of Oliveira's losing its performance and he was really losing that battle, dropping back off the back of La Cona. And then Alex Lowe, he did get pretty close to him in the end.

Yeah, I think it was three tenths by the end. What I will say is, as you mentioned, Oliveira, he did manage to slot into second within the first lap of the race, and he was working really hard to try and keep that position. The BMW is an inline four versus the V4, the Ducati. So it screams anyway, but it just seemed to be working harder than the Ducati to try and keep up with it. Yeah, so he couldn't maintain that position, that second position for the whole SuperPole race, unfortunately, and Lekwine did get around him.

I think Monteller again, I think he was up there, but I believe he crashed. He finished sixth, yes. He did finish the race, but he couldn't maintain that podium position. So again, the results, Boulogne in first, La Cona in second, Oliveira third, Alex Lowe's, then Sam Lowe's, Monteller, Vierhe, Bassani and Bautista in ninth. So after this, Boulogne nine consecutive wins with this race stretching back into back into 2025.

He's got a point to prove, hasn't he? He really has. And all the rumours and his wishes about going to MotoGP, coming to the Frey. He wants to prove a point before he goes. Anything else?

Nothing for SuperPole, as you mentioned, Bulega, he's the real deal. He's at one with that Ducati. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then the biggie, Sunday afternoon, race two, 82,132 fans ready for the Portuguese national anthem and their rider, Oliveira.

We had a front row of Bulega, La Cona, Oliveira, Alex Lowe's, Sam Lowe's and then Monteller. What have you got from this one? Yes, we're sounding like a stock record in this podcast, aren't we? Oh, we just. Bulega, it's a dominance.

I must admit, he didn't have it as a... Well, he wasn't overtaken in the first few laps, but he didn't just speed off into the distance, but he just gradually, he gradually built his pace, I think in all three races, to be fair, just gradually built his pace and then built that margin in, you know, like a true, well, they're all professionals, but like a true professional, like a true champion, he's just slowly, slowly built that pace and slowly built that margin into his lead. So on a lap, approximately lap three, again, we're talking approximately because it's 17 laps to go. But Vierre and Monteller, they crashed at turn five and six. Now, because this happened off the cameras initially, it was believed to be a collision, but when you actually played it back, when they actually played the footage back, it was not a collision.

They just had a completely separate incidence at the same turn. So that's the downhill turn, the left turn, past that big building. Yeah, you can see there was no collision. They just both came off. Both looked like front end slides.

Yeah. Yeah. So again, Monteller, he's got the speed, but if only he can just stay on the bike, he could get some great results. Bautista, about five laps later, so 12 laps remaining. Bautista crashed at the same turn, five and six.

So both Barney Tukatis were out within five laps of each other, and they did actually cut to the pit. And you could see the Barney Tukati boss with his head in his hands. Yeah, not a good day out for the Barney team. One point on the last lap is Garret Gurloff. He actually crashed in the last corner of the last lap, and that was that looks like a fast corner.

He was walking away from it, so he doesn't appear to be injured. But yeah, it just seemed a bit bizarre to crash on the last corner of the last lap. Yeah, I don't remember him being under a massive amount of pressure on that turn either. Not like in the SuperPol. No.

And then, yeah, we know how it finishes. Boulogne coming across the line in first, nearly two seconds ahead of Laquona. Oliveira in third, and then, surprise, surprise, Alex Lowe's, Sam Lowe's. So Boulogne leading 50 out of 50 laps across the weekend. Laquona had fastest lap of race two.

Oliveira, to be fair to him, home race, third podium of the weekend. And Alex Lowe's wasn't far back from Oliveira. I've got him down as 0.169 behind him. And then Sam Lowe's, even with that broken wrist, finishing in fifth, and he's finished P5 in every race that he's finished in 2026. So there's a bit of a pattern emerging, isn't there, with how these are finishing?

I think if you look at the championship standings now, Boulogne is 124 points. So he's nearly twice as many points as second place. That's after two rounds. So Iqalou, Laquona's in second place, championship with 68. Bassani's third with 60 points.

Miguel Oliveira, 56 points in fourth. As you mentioned, just going back to Sam Lowe's for a moment. Yeah, again, finishing fifth with a broken wrist. That's amazing. Well done to Sam.

It's brilliant. Oliveira, third again. Big celebrations from the BMW team. I don't want to sound like a downer, though, but again, it's not first or second, is it? And that bike was on top last year.

So we're seeing this combination again of Ducati and Boulogne. And again, that top rack element is missing. Yeah, definitely. I think they were the two standout riders from last season, weren't they? And it doesn't look like anybody's going to compete with Boulogne this season.

It was the Boulogne master class. Just a few stats from the weekend then. Boulogne, six wins from six. He's obviously won all of these at Portimao, all of them at the Phillip Island. He led 50 out of 50 laps at Portimao and he's had 10 consecutive wins, which is the best start since Alvaro Bautista's 11 in a row in 2019.

Oliveira got the three podiums and the Aruba Ducati team with their outstanding performance was the first team in superbike history to take three 1-2 finishes across an entire weekend and the 1-2 in SuperPole qualifying. Sam Lowe finished fifth in every race in 2026, which is five from five. And that was even after the fractured risk as we spoke about earlier on. So what's coming up next then? Yeah, so World Superbikes will return in three weeks' time at Assen.

So we'll be back to cover the racing from Assen. But in the meantime, the next episode of MotoPod will be out next week. That's episode 832, covering the MotoGP from Cota. So that'll be co-host Jim and Jake. Jim actually drove two days to Texas to watch the racing.

So looking forward to hearing the latest from MotoGP. Yeah, I think they've got a substantial amount of stuff to cover with the races that was going on. Action all around, I think. So before we sign off, guys, if you like listening to this, have a look at our socials. It's something that we're trying to push a bit more now, so you can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, threads, X, Blue Sky, all of those.

And obviously wherever you find the podcast, give us a like, give us a follow, drop us a comment and we will see you next time. Cheers, Carl. Thanks, Danny. Cheers.