WorldSBK Aragon: Older setup puts Lowes in race-two contention

All winter long Alex Lowes and his WorldSBK crew have been concentrating on race setup for the start of the 2022 season - that has included working with the new forks that Showa brought to the works Kawasaki squad this year.

Concentrating almost exclusively on race pace was a strategy that paid off in Lowes’ first Kawasaki WorldSBK season in 2020, as he was ‘slow’ in pre-season testing at Phillip Island but then went on to podium and win a race when the first championship points came up for grabs. This year it has not worked out that way at Round One.

Lowes was not able to find the right front end feel he wanted in Race One at Motorland, to the point whereby he crashed out.

“It’s just a disappointment to start the year like that. I’ve struggled all week to find a good setting, even though I’ve worked hard. Maybe I worked too much in the winter on used tyres and old tyres. When it came time to be fast, I wasn’t quite as fast as I wanted to be,” Lowes told bikesportnews.com.

He was a deeply unhappy man on Saturday after his crash: “I think we just made some mistakes with the setting on the bike. It is frustrating really that with the experience we have got we ended up where we are. We all have to take responsibility.”

Lowes’ situation was transformed, if not to podium standards, on Sunday. He scored sixth in the Superpole race and then fifth in race two.

“I was happy with today,” said Lowes. “It was better than we managed last year in terms of race time. Last year, strange conditions helped us be able to get on the podium, but it was a special weekend. Today, in a bit hotter conditions, I felt quite good. I was not too far off the guys at the front. We’re just lacking a few tenths, but we’re also a step in front of the