The primary hope for all in the BbKRT squad is that they find consistently dry track conditions around the undulating 4.445km-long Oceanside track at ‘PI’, after some recent European-based tests were limited by adverse weather conditions.

This being the second season of WorldSBK competition for the Kawasaki-powered bimota KB998 Rimini machine, returning riders Lowes and Bassani have literally been over the legendary ‘PI’ course before as BbKRT competitors.

There will be four exclusive WorldSBK test sessions at PI, with potentially eight hours of action taking place across four individual outings over the two days.

Shortly after the end of the official tests, the 2026 pre-season itself will get underway. The opening qualifying sessions and races of the 12-round/36-race season will be held between 20-22 February.

Alex Lowes stated: “First of all, I am hoping that the weather will not be too bad for the tests. It looks like it is going to be OK. It has been a long winter, partly because we have not done as many laps as we wanted to, so I am really excited to get the year started. The initial plan for the test is to get some mileage on the bike. After we tried some set-up ideas in the Jerez post-race test session at the end of last year, the bike was working well. But so far, Jerez was the only place we managed to try the settings, so we need to focus hard on Monday and Tuesday to see if the new set-up also works here at Phillip Island. We have harder tyres here compared to the rest of the calendar, and Phillip Island is a special layout.”

Axel Bassani stated: “On Monday and Tuesday we have our two-day pre-season test in Australia. It will be a very important one because during the winter tests in Europe we did not ride a lot as the weather was always quite bad. We have a lot of work to do but in the end we will try to understand the bike and what to do with our set-up. I am also looking forward to working with my crew chief, Uri, as we have not been able to work together a lot until now. On the first day of the test we will try to understand everything about the bike and after that we will try to start working in a good way.”

Guim Roda, BbKRT Team Manager, stated: “We will enjoy two days of tests at Phillip Island and will work to create a good bike set-up for the first race weekend of the year. We are quite motivated to put everything together and see what kind of steps we made with the development of the bike through 2025. We want to see how much we improved at this track. This will be a very particular test because all the riders are quite focused on the lap times, as they are preparing for the first race weekend. Temperature changes can make all the things we test on Monday/Tuesday not 100% useful for race weekend, so we will need to pay attention not to mix bike development with our race set-up.”