BIMOTA BB3
FIRST RIDE
P74
And so far so good. Although
it's not eligible to score points un-
til sufficient customer bikes have
been built to meet homologation
rules, the BB3 has consistently
taken Ayrton Badovini and Chris-
tian Iddon to the front of the Evo
class field, and often into the top
10 finishers overall. In fact, if Ba-
dovini had been eligible to score
points, he'd be second in the Evo
standings as the series hits its
summer break. Not bad for a bike
that first turned a wheel under its
own power as recently as March
of this year.
The first chance for us to ride
the BB3 came at the BMW track
day at the brand-new Circuito
Tazio Nuvolari near Pavia, on the
banks of the River Po. But apart
from providing a nice chance to
view the array of different Bimota
models down the years, this was
pretty much a write-off in terms
of genuinely evaluating the BB3,
for two reasons. First, three cor-
ners on the 1.73-mile track had
been resurfaced only two days
before the event (after breaking
up through over-use of the new
track by cars) and were lethally
slippery, making it necessary to
literally ride round the outside
of the turns on the white line, to
avoid crashing (as some sadly
did).
But even on the small sec-
tion of track that could be used
safely, including the third-gear
right-hand sweeper at the end
of the fourth-gear main straight,
the new Bimota displayed a wor-
rying tendency to push the front
end, accompanied by increas-
ingly massive front-end chatter if
I tried to maintain corner speed.
The culprit was found with a trip
to the pits – the Continental front
tire fitted to the bike was graining
badly on the right side, denoting
the chatter that we then tried to
fix by adjusting the suspension.
The Öhlins-Andreani suspen-
sion crew who take care of the
factory Bimota team at World Su-
perbike races were there to help
resolve the problem, but it was
evident after 14 laps of trying that
it was the tire, not setup. Okay,
maybe a duff tire: these things
happen, so throw on another.
But the result was the same. The
Continental tires fitted to the bike
as a hangover from an exclusivity
contract signed by Bimota's pre-
