BbKRT riders Alex Lowes and Axel Bassani made good progress toward finding their final race settings on the all-new bimota KB998 Rimini machine during the four individual WorldSBK track sessions that were held between 17-18 February.

The first day was dry, sunny and largely free of wind from start to finish, but on day two a dry morning session was followed by a wet afternoon. Only the last few minutes of the final session provided a dry enough track for some meaningful last-minute testing, so both bimota riders used that late opportunity to their advantage with their technical crews.

With all possible pre-season preparations complete, Alex left the DWO Phillip Island Official test sessions with the overall seventh best lap time, and Axel was the eighth quickest rider of all.

The 2025 WorldSBK Championship will have its opening round at Phillip Island, between 21-23 February.

Phillip Island is the traditional starting venue for each WorldSBK season, with the 4.445km long circuit located on a picturesque island located just off the south coast of the state of Victoria. It is a highly popular WorldSBK venue, with a heavily left-handed layout and several long high speed corners that put particular stresses on the left side of the tyres.

There will be three races at the opening round, including two full distance contests over 20 laps - one on Saturday and one on Sunday. They will, however, both feature mandatory tyre change pitstops at half race distance. There will also be a ten lap Tissot Superpole Race on Sunday.

Each long WorldSBK race is scheduled to start at 16.00 local time, with the Superpole ‘sprint’ race taking place at 13.00 on Sunday 23 February. CET in Europe is 10 hours behind the local time in Australia.

Alex Lowes, stated: “Our test was good. We had a few things to try in the afternoon session, but we only got a few laps in near the end. We made a pretty big change, which has given us some good direction for the weekend. The test was positive, I enjoyed it, and we stayed out of trouble. I am looking forward to the first race on the bimota KB998 Rimini. The bike has been good on used tyres, but I am ready for the tyre changes in the long races. We have practiced the wheel changes and it is the same for everyone. I enjoy the Superpole races and in effect we are going to have ‘five’ Superpole races - with a couple of pitstops in the middle. We just need to have a good Superpole qualifying session and get stuck into the races. I am feeling good and I’m ready to start the new adventure.”

Axel Bassani, stated: “This test has been quite good and we did some laps with different types of tyres. We tried to understand what was possible but the conditions were changing today so it has not been easy to understand. We changed something on the bike because my feeling compared to the Jerez and Portimao tests has been quite different. I think we found quite a good base for the races. I was a little bit disappointed in the final afternoon, as this weather was not good. We had to wait until eight minutes from the end and I did only three laps. I tried to push, but not so much because the track was not really clean after the rain. These two test days are finished, now we can relax for short time before the race weekend begins. Test are tests and races are races, so we will see what happens. It is always different, so we will see.”

Pere Riba, Crew Chief for Alex Lowes, stated: “The test has been smooth. One of the targets was to work with calmness to try to understand the things we have done. This was especially important because every year when we arrive in Australia everybody is very excited. We saw there were many crashes here so we had to be careful. We have been very focused and Alex has been very, very good. We are learning. We have not had much time with the bikes because in some previous test it was raining at times. We have followed our test plan, we tried a couple of big items to understand more things and we will start with some of the biggest items for race weekend. I am quite happy and I think Alex is understanding the bike.”

Marcel Duinker, Crew Chief for Axel Bassani, stated: “I am very satisfied with the test, which was the final showdown before the opening race weekend. We adapted the bike, mainly this morning in the dry conditions. Yesterday we understood our limitations so we adapted the bike to the characteristic of the track and the rear tyres. Axel was very consistent over far more than race distance on the tyres and he was improving all the time. We made the correct step this morning. This afternoon was all about enjoying the track, even if the weather disturbed things a bit. We did some wheel change practice, both yesterday and on the final day. We have done it many times in the past but it was good to rehearse a little bit. We used the time we had in this two day test to the maximum and we are where we need to be.”