Alex Lowes: Portimao WorldSBK test “the best I’ve felt so far on the Bimota”

Alex Lowes says he made progress on the front end of the Bimota World Superbike machine at this weekend’s Portimao test.

Lowes spoke throughout the winter of his need to adapt his riding style to the characteristics of the Bimota KB998 for this season, and a step forward has seemingly been made at the in-season test at Portimao, where he finished the second day third-fastest and said he had the best feeling he’s had yet on the Italian machine.

“Today I felt good on the bike,” Lowes told WorldSBK.com after the second day in Portugal.

“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.”

Lowes said that he had been focusing on font feeling during day two, something which he had mentioned as a problem prior to the weekend.

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

“Geometry settings we hadn’t been able to explore, different stiffnesses on the front, some positive, some negative.

“I think we only managed [45 laps], so that was all we managed to get through.

“The main take away for the test was an improved feeling on the front of the bike, that was my target after Phillip Island where I didn’t feel like I could pass the other riders, so that was a positive.”

Although there was progress on the front end, Lowes still felt there was margin to improve in terms of rear grip.

“The negative is I still need to improve the rear grip, especially on the fresh tires,” he said.

“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.”