Lowes lacking speed, ‘Ducati’s will be hard to beat’

Kawasaki Racing’s Alex Lowes heads to Portimao for the second WorldSBK test in as many weeks on Tuesday.

Lowes has previously been lulled into a false sense of winter test security when finding he can set strong lap times in the cooler conditions, only to lose some pace when the season starts on warmer tracks during the real race season. He was still satisfied by the work done last week at Jerez, however, especially as there is one more European test to go soon, before the Official Championship test and then round one in Australia in a few weeks.

“It went pretty well, but in winter testing, the track is cold and grippy, and if you use soft tyres everything feels amazing,” explained Lowes after his Spanish outing. “I did a long run with the hardest front we had, and the hard rear, to try to take some grip away. I did sixteen laps but I still felt like I had a lot of grip. Even at the start of those laps I did some 1’39s, which is not realistic with a hard front and an SC0 rear. We shouldn’t be doing those lap times. It is hard to test when it is like this, but obviously we can still test the new parts back-to-back. But I was quite happy because I didn’t really push to go fast and I was quite consistent.”

The next test, at Portimao between 31 January and 1 February, will help Lowes and his team make their final preparations for the start of the 2023 season. “We have work to do,” he continued. “We didn’t massively improve in the speed and a few areas where we need to try to improve - off the corners and the speed. In a race situation, as we saw with Johnny [Rea] last year, when the grip drops at the end of the race you need to be in a position where you can pass. With our bike it looks like we are lacking a bit in this