World Superbike
Rea says Lowes crew way of working "hard to understand"
Jonathan Rea has questioned why there is such a big difference in the set-up philosophies within the Kawasaki World Superbike garage, amid teammate Alex Lowes' struggles to match the established frontrunners.
Jamie Klein Sebastian Fränzschky
Published: Jun 9, 2022, 1:00 PM
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Rea and Lowes are now in their third season as teammates at Kawasaki, and while the latter's spell with the Japanese manufacturer started well with a win at Phillip Island in 2020, since then he hasn't been a match for Rea.
While Rea won his sixth WSBK title in 2020 and finished a close runner-up to Toprak Razgatlioglu last year, Lowes slipped from an early lead to sixth in 2020 and concluded an injury-ridden '21 campaign eighth.
So far in 2022, Rea has won five races to sit second in the points behind Ducati's Alvaro Bautista, Lowes lies seventh in the standings with a best finish of fourth.
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Discussing Lowes' failure to get on terms with the WSBK 'big three' of himself, Razgatlioglu and Bautista, Rea pointed out that the ZX-10RR his teammate rides is set-up with a different philosophy to his own.
He suggested that Lowes' results would improve if the #22 bike's crew worked in a similar technical direction to his own.
"I speak with Alex quite a bit, but I don’t really understand what they are doing on his side of the garage," Rea told Motorsport.com's German edition.
"They work quite differently from us in terms of fundamentals on the bike... it’s hard to understand why. I see life is difficult for him there.
"It would be nice if Alex could ride my bike, just sit on my bike with his [riding] position and see how he feels, because the bikes are quite different.
"He rides in a different way, we develop the bike in different ways with our crew chiefs and electronics engineers… it’s hard to say what’s the right way or wrong way, but I would feel much better if we could work together more technically."
When it was put to him that Leon Haslam likewise struggled during his single season as Rea's teammate in 2019, the Ulsterman made an implied swipe at Lowes' crew chief Marcel Duinker, who likewise worked with Haslam and, previous to that, 2013 world champion Tom Sykes.
"Riders change, but the thing that hasn’t changed are the crew chiefs," Rea said. "Ideally we should all work much better together."
While insistent that the start to his season isn't as bad as it appears on paper after an encouraging ride to fourth in the final race at Estoril, Lowes admitted that adopting a more similar approach to Rea would pay dividends.
“There would be some benefit I guess if the crews were to work together a bit better to improve the package, because the other guys are improving a lot,” said Lowes when asked about the differences between his bike and Rea's.
“We need each other’s help to push each other forward. But the setting of the bike is quite different, and it’s not my request. The team decided to go in a different way."
Pressed further on whether this state of affairs was on Duinker’s insistence, Lowes replied: “The team has a different idea to the other side of the garage. I don’t know what else to say!”
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