Guim Roda, the Team Manager at the bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team, reflected on his squad's progress at the Jerez Test.

The bimota name returned to the World Superbike Championship for the 2025 season with the KB998 Rimini in the bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team.

It was a successful debut season for the machine in the hands of Alex Lowes and Axel Bassani, who will both continue with the project for the 2026 World Superbike Championship.

After their debut season in the series, the bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team took part in the two-day Jerez Test with Lowes, Bassani and Test Rider, Xavi Fores. All three riders were testing new parts for the KB998 Rimini with hopes of bringing it further towards the front next season.

"I cannot go into details about the things we tested," Team Manager Guim Roda told WorldSBK.com after the Jerez Test.

"But there are always many areas to work with the base blocks, which include the engine side, electronics, suspension, chassis, and setup. We tried to make a combination of 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 are 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."

'The tools we have are the superconcession possibilities...'

The KB998 Rimini struggled throughout the 2025 season with its straight-line speed from its Kawasaki ZX-10RR engine. Roda went on to discuss how the team could improve the engine for the 2026 season in line with the World Superbike rules.

"This is a continuous fight with the rules," he explained.

"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."