Axel Bassani took a strong fourth place finish in the opening round of the 2026 World Superbike season, but he was displeased with the timing of a penalty he received.<\/p>\n
Bassani passed Sam Lowes<\/a> for fourth on lap two at turn four. He made heavy contact as he did so, and turned around to apologise to Lowes as they exited the corner.<\/p>\n The Bimota rider then opened up a gap of around one second over Lowes before being given a \u2018drop one position penalty\u2019. It meant he had to give up the time he had gained over Lowes since passing him as well as the position.<\/p>\n Bassani<\/a> had little issue with the penalty himself, but was frustrated with the timing of it.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s been a really good race,\u201d he said, speaking to WorldSBK.com.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been not really good for the penalty, but it\u2019s part of the game. Maybe one thing [is that] the penalty was right, but to arrive after three or four laps is not really good because already I had one second from the rider behind me so I had to lose a lot of time to give again the position.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s okay, it\u2019s part of the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI felt good, the pace was really good, especially after half race we were quite fast. So we arrived near to the podium \u2013 we have to be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n In the end, Bassani crossed the line 0.036 seconds behind third-placed Lorenzo Baldassarri<\/a>. It would\u2019ve been a first World Superbike<\/a> podium as a Bimota rider for Bassani, but he was not emotional about missing out.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we know why we didn\u2019t arrive on the podium today \u2013 we know we have the speed, we have only to put it all together,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cWe can improve some parts, sure, but the speed is there, it\u2019s in our hands, and we will try again tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n Bassani added that he felt it would\u2019ve been too risky to try to force a pass on Baldassarri.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought sometimes to try to overtake,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think [there was more to lose than gain]. So, I tried something in the last corner to arrive with more speed, but I knew it was impossible to overtake on the straight. But it\u2019s part of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Axel Bassani took a strong fourth place finish in the opening round of the 2026 World Superbike season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,120859,120860,172743,806,805,803,804,228720,85],"class_list":["post-494868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-axel-bassani","tag-bimota-by-kawasaki-racing-team","tag-elf-marc-vds-racing-team","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sam-lowes","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}