One of the key talking points about the 2024 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship is who will replace Jonathan Rea at the Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK squad next year. Rea’s bombshell move to Yamaha for the next two seasons opened up a seat at the team which has enjoyed so much success in recent seasons. Speaking during Free Practice 1 for the Aragon Round, Team Manager Guim Roda provided an update on KRT’s search for a new rider, revealing they’d contacted a long list of riders although he did not name names.

KRT have one rider in place for next year with Alex Lowes contracted for the 2024 season, but the name of his teammate has become a big unknown since the #65’s shock move to Yamaha which was announced at the start of September. Since then, speculation has been rife about who will replace the six-time Champion at KRT. Several riders have been linked with the team, but Roda didn’t namecheck any specific riders when asked about their search.

Discussing the latest from KRT as they look for a new teammate for Lowes, Roda explained during FP1: “We are checking the market. We have contacted two riders in MotoGP™, three riders in Moto2™ and five riders in WorldSBK. We are checking and in BSB we have contacts. We’re working on that and let’s see what our final decision is.”

One name who has been mentioned is Axel Bassani (Motocorsa Racing) with the Italian addressing the rumours on Thursday at Aragon. The #47 confirmed he was talking with Kawasaki as he goes in search of a factory seat after a series of impressive performances since he made his debut in 2021. The 23-year-old has been a podium scorer on his Independent Ducati machine but has stated on multiple occasions he would like to ride for a factory team.

When Bassani’s name was put to Roda, he said: “There’s many riders we’ve been talking with. We need to check for contracts and what the final decision from Kawasaki is. For now, we’re open to all possibilities and I think it’ll take ten days or two weeks to fix the decision.”

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Source: WorldSBK.com