Top Six For Lowes On Balaton P...

The all-new WorldSBK venue of Balaton Park in Hungary hosted its first WorldSBK race on Saturday 26 July, with the bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team riders Alex Lowes and Axel Bassani taking away sixth and tenth place finishes respectively.

After just one day of free practice on track on Friday, Alex and Axel took their bimota KB998 Rimini WorldSBK machines into Superpole qualifying and Race One on Saturday 26 July.

Balaton Park has proven to be a very tight and intense 4.075km circuit, making it a particular physical challenge for all the riders in practice, qualifying and now in its debut WorldSBK race.

A red flagged Superpole Qualifying session on Saturday morning made for an intense late dash to gain the best starting position for Race One. Still refining their final Superpole and race set-ups, Lowes would end up 12th, with Bassani 20th.

Race One, like Superpole, would also be stopped by a red flag incident. The initial race action was halted after just two corners of Lap One. Seven riders fell after an initial collision, and even more riders - including Bassani and Lowes - found themselves in the middle of this big mid-pack incident at T2.

After the track was made ready again there was a quick restart procedure for the 20 of the original 23 riders who made it back to the startline. The official final running of Race One lasted for 20 laps, one fewer than the planned distance due to the earlier red flag stoppage.

On a dry track surface, Lowes was initially ranked in seventh place, before moving up to sixth position. He was then in fifth place for nine laps. Losing a little pace in the final part of the race - partly due to racing in Hungary just two weeks after suffering a left ankle injury at the previous round - Alex was finally passed by one rider near the end of the inaugural Balaton Park race.

Alex’s eventual sixth place gained him some important championship points, and showed more of the potential contained within the exciting new bimota KB998 Rimini.

Starting from the sixth row of the grid, Bassani stuck to his task from his first lap to his last and took away six championship points for his tenth place finish. He was hit by another rider during the T2 incident, but rode through the discomfort in the re-start to finish ten places higher than he had qualified in Superpole.

Sunday 27 July will host two more WorldSBK races; the ten-lap Superpole Race at 11am and then a final 23-lap Race Two, which is scheduled to start at 14.00. A change in the largely dry and warm weather is expected, with heavy rains forecast to arrive ahead of the track action.

Alex Lowes stated: “I was struggling this weekend to find a good feeling. We tried something quite big on the front for Superpole and I lost the understanding of the front. So, for the race, we went back a kind of modified setting. My pace in the race was quite good, apart from the last part. In the mid-part of the race I was quite strong. We just missed a bit in the last few laps and this has to be our target, to try to close this gap a little bit. This track is quite physical anyway, and in the last few laps of the race I was struggling a bit. But, in general, I was OK.”

Axel Bassani stated: “The first start was really good but in the second corner I was in the middle of the crash. One rider directly hit my leg so now I have a little bit of pain. The re-start was not like the first one but I tried to do my own pace. In the first six or seven laps it was difficult for me to ride. After that, I started to understand how to ride to find some speed. I then started to recover some positions. It was a difficult race but we finished inside the top ten and took some points - so that is positive.”