The official 2025 World Superbike livery for the KB998 Rimini has been unveiled.
The new Bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team (BbKRT) held its preseason launch at the bimota factory HQ on Thursday. For the first time since their return to World Superbike's the official livery for the team has been displayed.
The team will take over from where the Kawasaki Racing Team left off at the end of the 2024 season. BbKRT will continue to use Alex Lowes and Axel Bassani on their KB998 and have shown some impressive speed during preseason testing in Jerez and Portimao.
Mr. Pierluigi Marconi, Chief Operating Officer of bimota, stated: “Today is a really exciting day. Finally, after many years, bimota can come back to the Superbike World Championship. Just two weeks after this presentation of the new bike and the BbKRT racing team we will start the first race.
"Like everybody can imagine, this is something that bimota was thinking could happen, but nobody could really believe. Finally, it has arrived. It’s incredible. Also, we can restart our ‘old history. When we began, we just made motorcycles for endurance races.
"Our aim was to take part in competition and then present the bike for production. Then we could sell the bikes for every customer to enjoy. After 50 years we can come back to our history, with the help of Kawasaki and the Provec team. It is so exciting.”
Mr. Keiichi Morohara, Kawasaki Racing Plan Manager from Kawasaki Motors, Ltd., stated: “Up until now, we have developed everything in-house. And in the past, we have been able to achieve the great feat of winning six consecutive championships.
"Now this new project is truly a big challenge for us. The KB998 Rimini is a steel trellis frame, as opposed to our aluminium twin-spar frame. However, we have already been able to confirm its capability using the Kawasaki engine and electronic package.
"We are really excited with this new direction in terms of chassis development thanks to our collaboration with bimota.”
Mr. Guim Roda, Team Manager bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team, stated: “Our amazing staff and infrastructure created to win Championships remains in place. Also our passion for development and innovation.
"With this new project we add the design heritage and incredible technical skills of bimota – this has the potential to be a winning combination.”
