Vierge strong P6 in Race 2 at Estoril, Lecuona’s comeback cut short by crash

A positive conclusion to the weekend for Xavi Vierge who placed sixth and seventh in Sunday’s races. A little short on consistency after a long break, Iker Lecuona was able to demonstrate speed and some strong passing on his way to P10 in the Superpole race, before he crashed out of Race 2 while pushing to reach the top ten.

As the Superpole Race got underway, Vierge started well from fifth on the grid, oscillating between fourth and seventh through the first turns. Sixth on lap four, Xavi battled briefly with Alex Lowes before dropping to seventh in the second half of the race, a position he defended until the end. Lying sixteenth in the initial stages, Lecuona pushed hard to gain five positions in the space of the first three laps. Settling into a consistently fast rhythm, Iker was able to progress to tenth place but, still lacking something physically speaking, could not quite reach the top nine, which would have been beneficial in terms of improving his starting position for Race 2. Test rider Tetsuta Nagashima finished sixteenth.

The day’s action concluded with the second and final 21-lap race. Seventh on the grid based on his Superpole race result, Vierge was lying P9 at the end of lap one. Part of a group of five riders fighting for the top five and separated by just a couple of tenths from Gardner and Rea up ahead, Xavi was soon able to move ahead of both the Australian and the Northern Irish rider. From there, Vierge tried hard to chase down Locatelli for fifth but did not quite have the pace in the final laps, with the factory rider nevertheless securing a strong sixth-place finish.

Losing a little off the line and finding himself in seventeenth place at the end of the first lap, Lecuona spent the initial phase of the race regaining the lost ground, moving into the points zone on lap four. Exploiting his strong pace to pass four slower riders over the following laps, the Spaniard soon climbed to eleventh. While pushing to close the two-second gap to van der Mark and fight for the top ten, Iker’s race came to an unfortunate end on lap thirteen when he crashed at Turn 7. Unable to rejoin, the Spaniard missed out on a potential top-ten finish.

With just one round remaining, Vierge consolidates eighth position in the overall standings with 157 points, while Lecuona remains fourteenth with a tally of 90. The Honda HRC team now heads straight to the Jerez Circuit in Spain, where the 2025 WorldSBK season finale will take place on 17–19 October.