The 2026 ZYN British Superbike Championship marks a new era for FS-3 Racing and following an incredibly busy six months, the team are completing their final stages of preparation for the opening round of the season at Oulton Park on the May Bank Holiday weekend (May 2/3/4).
The team’s AJN Steelstock bimota project started last year, following the new bimota KB988 Rimini Superbikes, powered by the Kawasaki ZX-10RR engine, debuting on the world stage.
The team began working closely with Provec, the team running the WSBK project, and combined with a series of meetings with Kawasaki in Japan, the European head office in Amsterdam and the UK base and representatives of bimota in Italy and Provec in Spain, planning began.
Team manager Darren Fry and chief engineer Ian Prestwood were invited to attend two tests in Jerez, with Max Cook and Joe Talbot also visiting for the final test to begin the relationship between the two teams.
FS-3 Racing team owner Nigel Snook reflected: “It has been both a busy and exciting time for the whole team. With title sponsorship confirmed with AJN Steelstock for another year, we were able to accept the challenge in the run up to Christmas. Since then, it’s been a matter of ordering and receiving sufficient parts to build four bikes, two to race and two that are used for spares.
“Everyone at Kawasaki, bimota and Provec have been brilliantly supportive and the end result is we have bikes that are practically identical in every detail, other than certain areas such as the electronics to conform to the BSB technical specifications, to those that finished on the podium at Phillip Island at this year’s WSBK round.
‘’With the big parts arriving in early February, the first rolling chasses were built up in our Coventry workshop and Provec even sent over their chief mechanic Arturo Perez to assist. As well as the bimota chassis, we have taken delivery of parts such as new exhaust systems from Akrapovic and bodywork from Speed Fibre. In addition to so many more from our many trade supporters, all of whom are excited to be involved in this new project.
‘’It all came together and thanks to our logistics partners SafePac and Renault we attended the WSBK test at Portimao a couple of weeks ago. Standing on the pit wall with the bimota designers and the Provec crew to watch Max and Joe complete their first laps on the bikes was a really special feeling. We all enjoyed the moment and the feedback from the riders was extremely positive, Max said it felt like a proper race bike and Joe was instantly amazed by the speed on the Portimao start straight!
‘’Alex Lowes and Marcel Duinker, the Kawasaki/Provec track engineer, were in our garage for large parts of the test and they will also be joining us at the first BSB Official test at Donington Park. The bikes ran perfectly using factory team’s base settings, so all we have to do now is prepare the bikes, secure the final few parts, then pack the truck and head to Donington Park!”