Alex Lowes completed his main goal at the Portimao Test

03/17/2025 06:06 AM

The Bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team and Alex Lowes had a 'positive' two-day test in Portimao.

For the two-day Portimao World Superbike Test, Alex Lowes was hoping to find more feeling on the front-end of his Bimota.

The British rider debuted the new KB998 Rimini at the Australian World Superbike Round at the end of February. During the opening round of the season, he finished inside the top ten in all three races as he crossed the line in eighth, seventh and eighth.

The two-day test in Portimao allowed Lowes and his Bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team to further adapt to the new machine.

"Today I felt good on the bike, honestly these two days have probably been the best I've felt so far on the Bimota, which is positive and normal as we're learning and improving it all the time," Lowes stated.

"It's a little bit of a shame about the weather as we're still testing items rather than focusing on track-specific settings.

"I wanted to do a long run and we had quite a few things on the schedule but you can't change the weather, so I enjoyed it, the guys did a fantastic job and we're slowly improving."

Lowes was able to meet his targets for the test as he found more front-end feeling. However, there are still improvements that he needs to make on the rear-end of the bike.

"Today on the agenda, a lot of the focus was on the front of the bike," Lowes explained.

"Geometry settings we hadn't been able to explore, different stiffnesses on the front, some positive, some negative. I think we only managed 35-40 laps, [45 laps] so that was all we managed to get through.

"The main takeaway for the test was an improved feeling on the front of the bike, that was my target after Philip Island where I didn't feel like I could pass the other riders, so that was a positive. The negative is I still need to improve the rear grip, especially on the fresh tires, I feel like from lap 10 onwards we're really strong but we're missing that initial lap time.

"In general, it's been a positive test, I feel good going into the second round in Portimao, I hope to make a step forward on the results from Phillip Island.

"Nothing crazy, but we can improve on our results and work really hard, hopefully battling close to the top six. Who knows if we can achieve more than that but first we need to analyze the results from this test and put it all together."

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