Its just been announced that Kawasaki’s second fastest superbike rider Alex Lowes has signed a new multi-year contract to remain with the Japanese factory for another year at least.
Despite getting off to a bit of a rocky start at the beginning of the year, missing a bunch of preseason testing through injury, the Alex Lowes hasn’t had a bad season so far, putting it on the podium no less than four times, and currently occupying p4 in the championship standings.
The contract was signed at the Assen round of the 2022 FIM World Superbike Championship and was witnessed by Kawasaki big-wig Mr Masatoshi Yoshioka, Director of Corporate Planning at KME (Kawasaki Motors Europe). That bit was in big writing in the Kawasaki press release, although I’ m not sure why. Mr Masatoshi Yoshioka must be a pretty big deal. Serious player.
Anyway, as you’d expect, Lowesy was pretty stoked to sign the new contract. He had this to say,
“I am really happy to have signed once more with the Kawasaki Racing Team, the most successful team in the current era of WorldSBK.
After a strange first year in the team last year due to the global situation and with such a short season, it’s been good to start this year at some different tracks and I’m understanding the bike a lot more. It’s also been slightly frustrating this year because I feel like we started strongly but the results are not quite where we would want them to be. We have a lot of potential and I’m still in the top four of the championship, close to the top three, which is the target for this year.
I’ll be working hard for the next few weeks to make that next step to be regularly challenging for the podium. Honestly, I feel like it’s close, so with this team and all these guys around me – with the relationships we have been building – everything is in place now to push things forward.
I’m really thankful to stay in the team next year, and proud of the faith that Kawasaki has shown in me. In our job there is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes than the results that you see on the track so I’m really happy about this new deal with KRT. A massive thanks to all the guys behind the project, to Guim and Biel Roda, Steve Guttridge and all the people at KHI in Japan for believing in me again.”
Guim Roda is the manager of KRT, and he said,
“Alex started with KRT during the Covid pandemic. He needed to learn quickly and concentrate on making championship points in those first three months; not easy. For 2021 he started the season strongly and we are all working to make those important steps to improve the performance of the overall package.
We are so happy to have Alex and he is highly motivated to continue with the KRT project. With this two-year agreement we are convinced that we will now build on these firm foundations to create the strongest package with him, Marcel, his Crew Chief, the Ninja ZX-10RR and the entire KRT organisation.”
