Alex Lowes and Axel Bassani rang in the 2025 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship season Down Under, representing Bimota in the Championship for the first time in a decade. Bimota’s performance in the weekend’s races wasn’t quite as fast as the pace they had been showing throughout preseason testing, but the feeling around the garage was a positive one nonetheless as the team is very optimistic about their package’s potential.

What the pair of Bimota riders lacked in outright speed, they made up for in consistency as they finished within the top 10 in each race, and at most a single grid position separating the two riders on the weekend. While Alex Lowes (bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team) couldn’t replicate the Race 2 win he achieved last year, considering he and his Provec Racing Team have switched to entirely new machinery, his Race 1 P8, Superpole P7, and Race 2 P8 sets a strong baseline to improve from going forward into the season.

On his weekend’s performance in Phillip Island, Lowes said: “It was good on Sunday, and I think we improved the bike a little bit as the weekend went on. The races were solid. We finished in the positions we thought we might finish in - seventh and eighth - but I did not have the confidence in the bike to really fight and was missing the ability to pass. I was stuck for the whole second race behind Andrea Locatelli. Respect to him because he made no mistakes, but I was in the position that if he went quicker, I went quicker, but I couldn’t get past him. If I step back and assess the whole week of official testing and then the first race weekend, it was a good week. We got a lot of information, this was our first time trying the bike in hotter conditions, the first time every trying the bike with an SC1 tyre in the back, and there are only two bimota KB998 Rimini race bikes in the world - Axel’s and mine. We finished all three races, and we will take a lot of information back to Europe. We have to be happy with the solid job we did.”

Axel Bassani’s performance in Australia saw a healthy improvement on his 2024 benchmarks, having improved from P12 to P9 in Race 1, from P11 to P9 in the Tissot Superpole Race, and from P11 to P10 in Race 2. Most notably, his improvement in his Tissot Superpole performance is a good omen for his season ahead, as in the past, it was an event in which the Italian rider tended to struggle. On his weekend at Phillip Island, Axel Bassani reiterated the importance of the work to come for both him and his bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team.

“Race 2 was a hard one as we are struggling on the straight against some other riders,” begun Bassani. “The start was not really good but afterwards I gained some positions and after a few laps we also recovered track position towards Alex and Andrea Locatelli, who were riding in front. The pace was not bad and I was feeling better than yesterday on the bike. We impoved a lot. We were always there, nearly ready to make an overtake but never from a ‘safe’ position. We were always top ten in Australia, and both bimota KB998 Rimini bikes were together, near each other at the end of the races, so we have to be happy. But, at the same time, we have to understand that we have a lot of work to do.”

Can Bimota build from this season opening weekend? Stay tuned with live race broadcasts, full session uploads, and behind-the-scenes content with the WorldSBK VideoPass!