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Home Challenge For BbKRT In Cremona
With the 2025 WorldSBK Championship now well underway, theunique Cremona Circuit will play host to the fourth round of the season,between 2-4 May. bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team riders Axel Bassani and AlexLowes each raced at Cremona for the KRT squad last year, but this will be theirfirst experience of this Italian circuit on their Italian-made KB998 Riminimachines.
The new BbKRT project has made a high-profile entrance into theWorldSBK paddock this season, with each lesson learned about the overallperformance of the Kawasaki-powered KB998 Rimini at different test and racevenues adding to the collective experience that can be brought to bear for thenext track outing.
After three rounds and nine individual races, Bassani is ninthin the championship and Lowes is 14th. Their personal best bimota results are afifth at Assen in Race Two for Axel and a sixth in the same race for Alex. TheBbKRT pairing are separated by a slender seven championship points at present.
As a circuit itself, Cremona is a known quantity for each rider,even if it was an all-new event on the WorldSBK calendar in 2024. It is anunknown quantity for all in the BbKRT team with the new KB998 machine, however,which will make the opening day of free practice at Cremona particularlyimportant.
The compact Cremona layout is a very different kind of trackfrom the most recent host venue of Assen, with the Italian circuit in theLombardy region featuring a vast array of slow and tight corners,counterbalanced by a long back straight - complete with a left-hand kink in themiddle.
At only 3.768km in length Cremona is very much on the short sidecompared to most WorldSBK venues, especially as it manages to include 13distinct corners. Visual highlights include the unique undulating chicane thatenters the heavily banked final corner, which leads the riders onto the shortstart/finish straight.
Action gets underway at Cremona on Friday, 2 May, with two FreePractice sessions. FP3 and then Superpole qualifying will precede a fulldistance Race One on Saturday, 3 May. The new traditional Sunday morning‘sprint’ race, over ten laps, will be followed up by the last WorldSBK race ofthe weekend, again over a full 23 lap duration.
Alex Lowes stated: “It will be exciting to ride an Italian bikeat an Italian track. Cremona is a relatively new venue on the WorldSBKcalendar. The layout is good and I had a good weekend there last year on theKawasaki. I enjoyed it, so I am looking forward to getting there this comingweekend. It is a tight, twisty track, a little bit quirky and bumpy in a fewareas. I think it will suit the bimota KB998 Rimini. There will also be a loadof new information for us to keep improving, so we need to work hard on Friday.It is always a pleasure to ride in front of the Italian fans, and there was agood crowd there last year. It is quite a small circuit so you can really feelthe atmosphere. I am excited to get back with Team 22 and let’s see if we canget our best results of the season.”
Axel Bassani stated: “This will be the first time for us inCremona and it is also my home round. That is always something nice - andsomething more, because it is really important to race at home. I really don’tknow what to expect because, like the previous round in Assen, we do not havedata for the bimota KB998 at Cremona. There is a long, long straight, which forus will be hard, but there are also a lot of mixed corners, so I think we canrecover a little bit of time. We will have to see what the weather will belike, but it is really, really hot; it will be interesting. That would be ourfirst time in the really hot conditions in Europe. There are a lot of thingsthat will be new for us, so I am excited. I think we have to proceed like wedid in Assen, stay focused, and always be fast from the beginning. After that,we can see what happens.”
