Gordon Ritchie | December 3, 2024
The Bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team (BbKRT) pairing of Alex Lowes and Axel Bassani ended up on top of the timesheets at what was a highly cosmopolitan two days of track action on November 26-27.
Alex Lowes has proven the new Bimota is well and truly on the pace.
Photography by Gold & Goose
As well as the BbKRT riders, there were also official WorldSBK entries from Pata Prometeon Yamaha, the newly official Kawasaki WorldSBK Team (formerly Puccetti Racing), Marc VDS Ducati and BMW’s official Endurance World Championship (if not WorldSBK) squad.
And that was just the global production-derived entries.
Honda UK was also there with both Superbike and Supersport machines, while WorldSSP machines and some staff from MIE Honda, Renzi Corse Ducati, and the now Ducati-equipped WRP team were also on site with their WorldSSP kit.
Adding to the exotic nature of the pre-winter test was the Honda MotoGP test team, with four riders in all, including new tester Aleix Espargaro, plus Luca Marini, Johan Zarco and Joan Mir. Bizarrely, Honda did not give any information about their activities at all, even to the point of not saying which rider set which lap time. Their transponders were given in just code numbers, with that number having no correlation to the numbers on the bikes or giving any clue to the riders’ identities.
Johann Zarco and the Honda RC213V put some MotoGP flavor into the WorldSBK test.
Espargaro and Marini rode on day one only, the others on day two. Espargaro was identified by some as the fastest of the four with a 1:38.590.
There were two Moto2 squads out on track as well. The Ajo Motorsport KTM squad ran new rider Colin Veijer, and the Klint Forward squad was testing its latest all-welded chassis alongside its two earlier prototypes—one with a bolted-together chassis and another previous all-welded stage of development.
Alex Lowes was fastest of all, despite only using one Q tire, finishing with a 1:38.355, just three-thousandths of a second up on teammate Bassani.
“I spent a lot of years on the Kawasaki, so there were two main targets for me,” said Lowes about the single day he had in Jerez. “To be on the bike a bit more and understand how to ride the bike in the best way. This is something I need to think about during the winter break. It was important to see if I have to change my style a bit. We did a long run and tried to work on used tires to get a feeling with the bike. I started to work a bit on my confidence with the front. I had a little crash in turn six, pushing the front to understand it a bit more. We used one qualifying tire only, and we made a good step with that. Even if that was not our main target, it was nice to be fast.”
The new Bimota, called a KB998, appears to have adjustable (or at least movable) winglets, as still photographs show the winglets in subtly different positions/angles at different places around the track. The WorldSBK team is not speaking about any tech aspects of the new bike just yet—even though the road-bike version was unveiled to the public at the EICMA show in Milan recently.
Florian Marino rode on day one of the tests on the Bimota KB998 in his capacity as official team test rider.
Next best behind the two official Bimota riders was Jonathan Rea on the R1 Yamaha—with his new crew chief Oriol ‘Uri’ Pallares in place of former boss Andrew Pitt for the very first time. Rea set his best of 1:38.452 on day two.
At Jerez last week, Garrett Gerloff had his second ride on the Kawasaki Puccetti Racing ZX-10RR, which he will ride in WorldSBK next year.
Garrett Gerloff used several Q tires on his second outing on the factory Kawasaki but ran into the limit of pure pace on stickier rubber, finishing as the fourth fastest Superbike rider.
“The test was good,” said Gerloff after both days had been completed. “For sure, I think we made one step compared to the last time we were here, so that feels good. We are still looking for more, but I am pretty happy with how it went here. I used Q tires because I am trying to work on my qualifying pace—that is what I am still a little frustrated about. I feel like I get to a wall, and I cannot go any faster. But it has been like that on each bike I have ridden in WorldSBK, so it is not this bike. It is nice to be running in the official colors at this test and to have everything like we can see it now.”
Garrett Gerloff went fourth quickest on the Kawasaki.
Sam Lowes, with new staff inside his Marc VDS Ducati team, ran a completely different setup compared to 2024, his Ducati going fourth quickest on the final day.
Andrea Locatelli (Yamaha) had a very fast crash at the left-handed turn seven in the morning of day two, destroying one bike and escaping uninjured but was heavily beaten and bruised by the experience. He took to his second bike later in the test, setting his best time on day two.
Marcel Schroetter was the quickest WorldSSP rider on his WRP Ducati for the first time. Expected new Renzi Corse Ducati signing Valetin Debise was the next best.
Kaito Toba was the third fastest WorldSSP rider, and a busy one at that, as he rode four different Honda 600s in all. Two came directly from Japan for evaluation, and two were the existing bikes from the existing MIE team. Andrej Vostatek also rode a second WRP Ducati.
OVERALL (Top 5)
- Alex Lowes (Bim) 1:38.355
- Axel Bassani (Bim) 1:38.358
- Jonathan Rea (Yam) 1:38.452
- Garrett Gerloff (Kaw) 1:38.839
- Sam Lowes (Duc) 1:38.890
