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Alex Lowes

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At last weekend’s Argentinian round for the WorldSBK Championship, the Kawasaki Racing Team had something special in mind for Race 1.

It wasn’t a new race strategy; they didn’t find 10hp extra in the ZX-10RR motor; nor did they make any major chassis changes.

What the team did do though was dig into the 125 years of Kawasaki history, and run with two special throw-back liveries for Saturday’s race.

World championship motorcycle racing takes another step back to the season returning at Misano.

The next three days sees both MotoGP and WorldSBK teams testing at the Italian circuit, preparing for the resumption of hostilities at Jerez in July and August.

Present are the MotoGP teams of KTM and Aprilia, allowed extra testing due to their status as concessions teams. Aleix Espargaro and Bradley Smith are riding for Aprilia, the second test for the Italian factory.

The Kawasaki Ninja ZX-25R is a bike that we are eagerly looking forward to, here at Asphalt & Rubber, which might seem strange if you don’t know too much about the quarter-liter sport bike.

But with a 250cc displacement coming from its inline-four engine, which revs to 17,000 rpm…well, the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-25R isn’t your typical mundane small-displacement affair.

Team Green is slowly building the hype machine for this model, and to help get us in the mood, we have a short video of WorldSBK racers Jonathan Rea and Alex Lowes putting the ZX-25R through its paces at the Jerez circuit.

Episode 133 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and this one comes to us again from the WorldSBK paddock, as Steve English and Gordon Ritchie talk about the season-opening round at Phillip Island.

A special early episode (we’ll have another show for you on Thursday, of course), the guys talk about the exciting racing action from Australia, which saw some surprise finishes and promises good things for the season ahead.

The show also includes snippets of audio from riders, including Alex Lowes, Scott Redding, and Toprak Razgatlıoğlu.

Confirming the news we already reported on, Alex Lowes will leave the Pata Yamaha team at the end of the 2019 WorldSBK, and move into green colors for next year, as the teammate to Jonathan Rea in the Kawasaki Racing Team.

Lowes replaces Leon Haslam in the factory Kawasaki team, and brings with him a great deal of knowledge on Team Green’s fastest rising competitor: Yamaha.

Confirming rumors long held in the WorldSBK paddock, Leon Haslam will not be with the Kawasaki Racing Team in the WorldSBK paddock next year. Though it hasn’t been announced yet, Alex Lowes is expected to take Haslam’s seat.

Haslam’s role in the KRT squad came after his British Superbike Championship win in 2018, and while this year’s season showed mixed results for the British rider (including a win at the Suzuka 8-Hours), the opportunity to add another top Superbike talent alongside Jonathan Rea was too much of an allure for Team Green.

It is news that has long been coming, ever since the Suzuka 8-Hours, but now it is official. Toprak Razgatlioglu will be leaving Puccetti Racing at the end of the season to race with the factory Pata Yamaha WorldSBK team in 2020.

Toprak Razgatlioglu will replace Alex Lowes in the Pata Yamaha squad, racing alongside Michael van der Mark, who will start his fourth season with the factory Yamaha team.

For a brief moment, the Yamaha Factory Racing Team was a five-time winner (in a row, I might add) at the Suzuka 8-Hours endurance race.

That reality was eventually snatched away by the FIM Endurance World Championship race direction officials, who this weekend learned something new about their rulebook, but the race run by the factory-backed Yamaha team was no less impressive.

For nearly eight hours, the team’s three riders (Alex Lowes, Michael van der Mark, and Katsuyuki Nakasuga) kept in check the best efforts by the Kawasaki Racing Team and Red Bull Honda squads, and it wasn’t until the final stint that Alex Lowes lost track of a raging Jonathan Rea.

If Tiger Woods needs a swing coach it stands to reason that even a world-class motorcycle racer needs a coach too.

Gone are the days where riders eschewed coaching - now they are embracing it. In paddocks, like in any walk of life, keeping up with the Joneses is a factor of life. When one rider makes a change, it forces others to do the same.

When world class racers got to the point of diminishing returns, like when it comes to fitness training, their focus turned to having more bike time with flat track or supermoto riding taking on extra significance.

Now it’s coaching that is taking center stage.

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