American Lifestyle FIM-E Super Twin pre-season headline- bike is ready, rider may need some work

After a 2025 that promised much but didn’t deliver, Chris van Nimmen and the Belgian American Lifestyle Super Twin team are looking for greater returns this season.

“After a lack lustre 2025 we started our winter break with rebuilding the fuel tank and relocate the oil tank to resolve the issues with oil pressure and fuel consumption we were having after burning out. When this was ready we made a test burnout at home and find very stable oil pressure and also the engine keeps running on good idle. After this test we could start to look at overhauling the powerplant. Checking the compression ratio and find out it was way too low, so after some measurements I had some different set ups ready, but talked about it with Speedy [Claus Christiansen] and decided to make a trip to Denmark to Speedy’s basement race shop.

With big help from Speedy we changed cylinder length, piston pockets, cam timing, pushrods etc. Once back home I could mount it all together. Fingers crossed for this season but I have a good feeling it will work out fine. We also changed the angle of the front fairing for better airstream.

The bike is almost ready but now the driver has to be ready also… at the start of the year I fell off the stairs and hurt my back and tailbone, I’m still recovering but with a lot of pain. Hopefully I’ll be able to drive the bike for the Main Event [opening round of the FIM-E season] and we’ve registered for sure and booked the ferry all ready.

We are also very grateful to Vincent Pels from Zodiac for continued support including supplying Spectro Oils!”

Hopefully the optimism that quickly dissipated last season will be revived as we head towards the 2026 season, and Van Nimmen will be in a position to dip further into the mid sixes (PB of 6.656s from 2024).

FIM-E Schedule 2026

22nd – 25th May, Main Event, Santa Pod Raceway, England
6th – 9th August, Summit Racing Equipment Internationals, Tierp Arena, Sweden
21st – 23rd August, NitrOlympX, Hockenheimring, Germany
10th – 13th September, Euro Finals, Santa Pod Raceway, England

Words Ivan Sansom and Rose Hughes, photos Ivan Sansom, Rose Hughes and Chris van Nimmen