Bimota explains key personnel change for 2026 WorldSBK season

A new crew chief for Axel Bassani at the Bimota WorldSBK team in 2026 means a change of roles for Kawasaki stalwart Marcel Duinker.

For Duinker, the personnel shuffle within Bimota leads to a change of roles after over a decade working as a crew chief at the Provec team that runs the Bimota factory World Superbike effort – and the factory Kawasaki effort before that – a role in which he won the world title in 2013 with Tom Sykes.

Bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team manager Guim Roda explained that Duinker – who has been with Kawasaki since it was in MotoGP in the 2000s – will remain within the Kawasaki and Bimota projects, but will take on a role that combines development with the support of teams running the KB998 in national championships, such as the FS-3 team in BSB.

“Uri [Oriol] Pallares will be Axel’s [Bassani] new crew chief, and Marcel Duinker will move to more of an engineering role to support development and work with Kawasaki,” said Roda, speaking to WorldSBK.com.

“He’ll also be helping out teams riding on Bimota bikes in the national championships.

“Marcel has experience with the technical side, especially with suspension, as well as a crew chief with engineering skills; he’s a great asset to have.”

On the other hand, the choice of Pallares as Bassani’s new crew chief was one that made sense given his experience with the Provec team, where he was chief mechanic under Pere Riba during Jonathan Rea’s title years, and his experience in 2025 as Rea’s crew chief at Yamaha.

“Uri, on his side, has been the chief mechanic for many years,” said Roda.

“He was working very closely with Pere Riba, and he has more experience than people think with organising a team for a race or a test at a high level.

“We think he’s ready to work with Axel.”

Bassani was able to get to work with Pallares for the first time at the Jerez test on 27 November. It's a relationship that may take time to build, and one that in its first day was complicated by sickness for Bassani.