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Bimtoa returned to the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship in 2025 with the KB998 Rimini machine, with riders Alex Lowes (bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team) and teammate Axel Bassani at the helm. It was a strong return for the Italian manufacturer, who took four podiums throughout the season and made progress throughout the year. Now, heading into the bike’s second season, Team Manager Guim Roda spoke about the next steps to move the package even closer to the front of the field.

2025 was the Italian manufacturer’s first campaign in WorldSBK since 2014 as they returned to WorldSBK with Provec Racing, which ran the incredibly successful Kawasaki Racing Team outfit until 2024. The bike features a Kawasaki engine combined with a Bimota chassis and it enjoyed a good first season, with four rostrums. Lowes took all four, with the first coming on home soil at Misano in the Tissot Superpole Race, while the last three all came at Magny-Cours.

However, progress never stops, and Bimota took part at the recent Jerez test. On Tuesday, test rider Xavi Fores was on the bike while he also spun some laps on Wednesday. On the same day, race riders Lowes and Bassani completed half-a-day each as they tested new items to make further progress with the bike.

Discussing the Jerez test and what was being tested, Roda said: “I cannot go into details about the things we tested, but there’s always many areas to work with the base blocks which includes the engine side, electronics, suspension, chassis, setup. We tried to make a combination in all of these parameters according to the concession points we can get, and the superconcessions that maybe we can take. We need to work in advance to understand how we’ll be able to improve the bike inside the rules. All the areas we have to improve small details to make the package much better and then, especially, reconfirm all these setup ideas that we cannot do during a race weekend. This year, we got a lot of information that we can work on and try to make the next step this year.”

While there were some very strong points about the KB998 Rimini, there were also some weaknesses – as with every bike. The straight-line speed of the machine was often lower than its rivals, which meant, despite being incredible quick through the corners, meant it was sometimes tricky to make moves. Roda discussed how there could be some improvements made in this area.

Roda said: “This is a continuous fight with the rules. In the end, we are quite tight with the mass production limitations and tight rules in the engine area. We need to face this. We have to wait. Either we make upgrades in the mass production bike, which takes a long time and is a big investment for a manufacturer, or we work with more flexible engine tuning to compensate differences against the others. Right now, the tools we have are the superconcession possibilities and concessions, so we need to work with that and try to take the next step.”

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