Oschersleben, Sprint: Pole, victory and title for Harry Payne and Kevin Rousseau

With ideal weather conditions, the 17 sidecar teams prepared for the penultimate race of the 2026 season. If pole-setters Harry Payne and Kevin Rousseau (Steinhausen Racing) manage to stay ahead of Pekka Päivärinta and Adam Christie (Hänni Racing) as well as the defending champions Sam and Tom Christie (CES Performance), they will be the new world champions.

Ted and Peugeot, who secured second place on the grid ahead of Christie and Päivärinta and are themselves hoping for a place on the podium, could well tip the balance in the battle for the world championship crown.

But there is also excitement further back in the field. Markus Schlosser and Lucas Krieg (Gustoil Sidecar Racing) were just six thousandths of a second behind Tim Reeves and Luca Schmidt (Carl Cox Motorsport) in qualifying. Behind them, Patrick Werkstetter and Valentin Pirat (Sattler Motorsport/Bonovo Action) are hoping for a top finish, whilst three teams – Thomas Eder and Kevin Kölsch, Corey and Danyon Turner, and Bennie Streuer and Manon Vissenberg – are all within 0.125 seconds of each other.

The twelve-lap sprint race went exactly as Payne/Rousseau had planned. Right from the start, the 2024 world champions took the lead, ahead of the Peugeots and the Christies. Although the chasing pack left no stone unturned in their efforts to maintain their pace, the gap to the leaders continued to widen. By the halfway point, the British-French duo had to focus solely on preserving their car and avoiding mistakes.

Behind the top three, Schlosser/Krieg and Päivärinta/Christie battled it out for fourth place. Close behind them came Reeves/Schmidt and Werkstetter/Pirat. A little further back, Eder/Kölsch, the Turner brothers and Streuer/Vissenberg provided some entertainment for the enthusiastic sidecar fans with their battle for eighth place.

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Whilst there were no changes to the top five places and Reeves once again had to retire his sidecar due to a technical fault, Turner – who had by then overtaken Eder – used a lap-up in the final lap to narrowly edge out Werkstetter after all. Eder, Streuer and the Dutchman Wiggert Kranenburg, who lives in Germany, along with his French passenger Loris Charteau, rounded off the top 10.

Results, Sidecar World Championship, Sprint Race, Oschersleben, 3 October 2026