2026 Portuguese WorldSBK Friday Practice Reaction: Sam Lowes tops FP1 & FP2

Bulega finally displaces Lowes from the top of the times.

1m40.291s puts him 0.151s clear of Lowes on Bulega's 16th lap of this session.

Bulega up to third on a 1m40.698s lap, 0.256s off the pace of Lowes.

Ducati 2-3-4 now with Lecuona, Bulega and Montella between Lowes and Bassani in fifth.

Oliveira up to seventh and is the fourth rider to be currently sat on a 1m40.0s lap time.

Decent lap from Tommy Bridewell - 1m41.315s briefly put him 11th, but he's just been bumped back to 12th as Baldassarri takes over that 11th spot.

Lecuona now up to second and 0.221s off Lowes after his bike issue from earlier was resolved. 

10 minutes remaining in FP1 now.

Bulega pushed back to third now as Bassani gets into the 1m40s and moves within 0.3s of Lowes who remains at the top.

A lot of riders back in the pits now, but Montella has just gone fourth-fastest, and Bulega up to second on a 1m41.021s.

Sam Lowes has just set his first lap time of the session to go 10th-fastest, so the Marc VDS rider is up and running and straight down to a reasonable pace at a 1m42.573s.

Not a physical problem for Sam Lowes but an electrical issue, as reported by the WorldSBK world feed broadcast.

Crash for Stefano Manzi at turn 13. He's got back on it and will have to come back to the pits.

With Montella's lap, Sam Lowes is the only rider to have not set a time yet in this session. He was one of three riders to be declared fit yesterday, but he is only five weeks on from a wrist fracture in Phillip Island, so possible he's tying to manage that from the beginning.

Oliveira said yesterday he wants BMW to be able to challenge Bulega this weekend, and he's just popped up to sixth.

Saying that, he's just been bumped back to 8th by Montella and Petrucci.

Gerloff disrupts that pattern by going fifth-fastest, as Bulega improves to a 1m40.119s, 0.677s behind Lowes' benchmark.

Lowes still the only rider in the 1.40s.

Leucona has had a technical problem, it looks like. Trying now to get the bike back to the pits. He's stopped on the straight between turns four and five so not too far to get back from there.

Slightly Noah's Ark in the top-six at the moment with a Bimota 1-2, Ducati 3-4, and Yamaha 5-6.

Bulega now up to fourth and 1.079s off the pace, as Lecuona improves to third and 0.636s behind Lowes.

Bulega's first lap has put him sixth-fastest and 1.5s off the pace.

Bassani has just been the first rider within a second of Lowes but still 0.6s off the pace.

Vierge has cut Lowes' gap to 1.134s even though Lowes himself has improved by a further 0.4s at the top.

Alex Lowes with the early benchmark on a 1m40.889s, almost 1.3s clear of Xavi Vierge, who is about 0.15s ahead of Remy Gardner.

19C of air temperature and 30C track temperature ahead of FP1 in Portimao. Clear skies, so nice enough conditions - a vast contrast to the four days of testing that most manufacturers took part in here in January and then March.

Bimota and Yamaha both stayed on for a third day after the two-day test earlier this month and were able to get some dry running in, so expect to see their riders competitive at least at the start of the weekend.

This weekend sees the debut of Tommy Bridewell in WorldSBK as a full-time rider. He and the Superbike Advocates team missed the Australian Round last month, of course, but are slated to continue for the remainder of this season from Portugal onwards.

They have arguably the strongest technical package in the championship, of course, which makes this prospect for Bridewell much different to what he had whenever he was riding Hondas on a one-off basis in the past two seasons.

You could argue that Bridewell's situation is quite comparable to that of Ryan Vickers last year, since it will be Bridewell's first full season in the championship and he will be on a Ducati, but where Vickers was in the experienced and established Motocorsa team Bridewell's Superbike Advocates squad is new to the championship.

Despite never having won a WorldSBK race at Portimao, Nicolo Bulega is the overwhelming favourite coming into this weekend.

He finished second in all three races last year to Toprak Razgatlioglu, pushing the Turkish rider to the finish in all three races; his biggest deficit to Razgatlioglu being only 0.195s.

Bulega was also victorious here on his way to the Supersport title in 2023, and has been on the podium in four of his six WorldSBK starts in the Algarve.

The first World Sportbike practice has finished in Portimao, that means we're only 15 or so minutes away from WorldSBK FP1 beginning.

Ferre Fleerackers has topped the SPB session aboard his Suzuki GSX-8R. His teammate, Buis, was third-fastest. The Kawasaki of Loris Veneman split the two Suzuki riders.

It's a pretty bizarre mix of bikes out there with Kawasaki ZX-6Rs, Aprilia RS 660s, Yamaha R7s, and Suzuki GSX-8Rs among the homologated bikes, but the first impression is that the class is visually more appealing than the old 300 class it has replaced, simply because the bikes are much faster and therefore look much more at home on a track the size of Portimao.

The first practice of the new World Sportbike class is underway at the moment and has just entered its final 15 minutes.

Former World Supersport 300 Champion Jeffrey Buis is the current session leader.