With less than a week to regroup, competitors in the 2025 FIM Sidecar World Championship head south to the iconic Estoril circuit on Portugal’s beautiful Atlantic coast, just twenty-five kilometres west of the capital city Lisbon, this coming weekend (26-27 April) for round two.
- Estoril next up for 2025 FIM Sidecar World Championship competitors
- Title fight heads south to Portugal for round two
- Markus Schlosser and Luca Schmidt hold early advantage
Following a dramatic opening round at Le Mans in France, the Swiss/German pairing of Markus Schlosser (Yamaha) and passenger Luca Schmidt hold the early advantage after finishing a close second in the eleven-lap Sprint race behind defending champions Harrison Payne (Yamaha) from Britain and his French passenger Kevin Rousseau before running away with race two.
For Payne and Rousseau, the joy of their Sprint race victory was replaced with disappointment the following day when a mechanical issue forced them out on the opening lap of race two with the resulting no-score dropping them down the points table to fourth.
Consistency is key to winning any FIM World Championship title and British brothers Sam and Thomas Christie (Yamaha) were a constant presence at the Circuit Bugatti where a pair of third-placed finishes were good enough for second overall, thirteen points behind Schlosser and Schmidt and six clear of the British/French partnership of Todd Ellis (Yamaha) and Emmanuelle Clement.
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Champions in 2022 and again in 2023, Ellis and Clement also demonstrated the importance of remaining consistent and after backing up a fourth in the Sprint race with fourth in race two they head to Portugal holding third in the standings, a single point clear of Payne/Rousseau with Britain’s Tim Reeves (Yamaha) and Mark Wilkes fifth on twenty-two points after recording two fifth places in France.
So strong is the entry, between them the leading five crews hold fourteen coveted FIM gold medals, but there is another former champion in the mix who finds himself playing an early game of catch-up after suffering mixed fortunes at the opening round.
Finland’s Pekka Päivärinta (Yamaha) – who is racing with Britain’s Adam Christie in the sidecar for the second successive season – has won five FIM Sidecar Rider World Championship titles, though his years of hard-earned experience counted for nothing when he span at the start of the Sprint race before getting caught up with British brothers Sam and Jack Laidlow (Yamaha) in an incident that left both crews sidelined.
Päivärinta and Christie fought back fiercely the following day, and a last-lap pass on Christie and Christie in the second race that was reduced from eighteen to twelve laps was good enough for second position and twenty points, although their DNF on the first lap of the opening race of the campaign could prove to be expensive when the seven-round series moves into the closing stages.
While the formbook is likely to be rewritten multiple times over the course of the season that runs until early October, other teams showing promising early pace include the German/French crew of Patrick Werktetter (Yamaha) and Valentin Pirat who threatened the top-five in both races, while the Laidlow brothers should also not be discounted.
After feverishly working late into the night to repair damage to their outfit following the Sprint race, the pair raced to sixth in Saturday’s race to get a solid score on the board.
The points-scoring action will get under way at Estoril at 11:20 (local time) on Sunday 27 April with the ten-lap Sprint race followed by the seventeen-lap Main race at 16:00 (local time).