The 2025 WorldSBK season was one of two halves for Axel Bassani but the Italian is sure that improvements in two aspects will help him to find better results in 2026.

Bassani started the season well last year as the Bimota KB998 replaced the Kawasaki ZX-10RR in the Provec Racing garage, rebranded last year from Kawasaki Racing Team to Bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team.

The Italian rider gave the KB998 its first front row qualifying at Misano, but crashed in Race 1 on his own and then crashed at the first corner with Nicolo Bulega in the Superpole Race. Following that, Bassani’s form dropped off, with only one result better than eighth after Misano.

But Bassani is positive ahead of the start of the 2026 WorldSBK season, even after a winter testing programme disrupted by bad weather in January.

“I feel quite good,” said Bassani, speaking to WorldSBK.com at the Bimota team launch.

“I can’t wait to start this new season. During the winter we did not a lot of work because the weather was quite bad during the tests, but it’s the same for everyone. 

“So, we’ll see what happens in Australia, but I think we’re ready. We have one more year of experience on this bike so some more data.”

The 2026 season is one Bassani hopes will show him with more consistency than in 2025, when he was able to show front-running pace at places like Misano, but then struggled to be in the points at Donington, for example.

“Try to be more consistent during the year because we had some good weekends and some really bad weekends, so this up-and-down [means] you lose a lot of points in the championship and this is not good,” Bassani said when asked what he wants to improve this year compared to last.

He added: “Try to improve the Superpole because I was always starting from the back of the grid and with the level really high in Superbike it’s difficult to recover a lot of positions. 

“So, one of my main points is to try to improve the Superpole because if we start in a good position on the grid we can do good races.”

Crew chief change

The headline change at Bimota over the winter has been the change of crew chief on Bassani’s side of the garage, as Oriol Pallares comes in to replace Marcel Duinker.

Pallares has experience both in the team, having worked as chief mechanic to Jonathan Rea during the Northern Irishman’s time as a factory Kawasaki rider, and as a crew chief after spending 2025 at Pata Yamaha as crew chief to Rea.

It’s the experience with the Provec team that Bassani hopes to be most able to take advantage of, though, and the Italian was able to begin working with his new crew chief in last year’s November post-season test in Jerez.

“It will be my first year with Uri [Oriol Pallares],” said Bassani.

“He’s a really good person, quiet person, tries always to think the good direction without going in strange things. 

“Also, he knows really well this team because he worked here for a lot of years with the team of Jonathan Rea. So, he can help me a little bit with the team to be more like a family – that is always good for a rider to feel good inside a team and to have a good atmosphere. 

“We’ll see, we need time to work together; it’s only the beginning of our first season so we’ll see.”