Day 2 saw him take a step forward, trading his Day 1 P7 for a Day 2 P3. The conditions in the test looked to finally be dry, allowing the grid for the grid get some dry running time after a rainy pair of days in Portimao in late January. This was the case for the first half of the day, however just before lunch, the weather turned. Sporadic rainfall sent riders to the garage for most of the afternoon apart from the last half hour when the track was finally dry enough for riders to push.

A start to not only the 2025 MOTUL FIM Superbikes World Championship season, but to the latest chapter in Bimota’s WorldSBK racing history took place last round, in Australia. Atop their new bike, Alex Lowes and his teammate Axel Bassani (bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team) rang in the manufacturer's return well, with Lowes earning a Pair of 8^th place finishes in Races 1 and 2, as well as a P7 in the Tissot Superpole Race. Since then, Lowes was consistent on his Day 1 P7, and in Day 2, he looked to be even more comfortable, taking a step forward and landed in P3 late in the afternoon session.

On his feeling with the bike, Lowes said, “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. 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.”

The poor weather today and throughout much of the preseason’s testing threw a wrench in the plans of many teams, however it is hard to imagine a team was more affected by the lack of time on track than Bimota who were unveiling their completely new KB998. Despite that, Lowes and Bassani have been competitive all through preseason and Australia. While the pair of star riders certainly hold a share of the credit for this, Lowes and his team are interested in developing their package as far as they can take it.

“Today on the agenda, a lot of the focus was on the front of the bike. 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.”

Keep up with Alex Lowes and the rest of the WorldSBK grid with live race streams and full session uploads if you miss the weekend’s action, all part of the WorldSBK VideoPass!