American Lifestyle – Bike is Ready, Rider May Need Some Work

words by Ivan Sansom and Rose Hughes
photos by Ivan Sansom, Rose Hughes, Chris Van Nimmen

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 lackluster 2025, we started our winter break by rebuilding the fuel tank and relocating 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 found very stable oil pressure, and also the engine kept running on good idle. After this test, we could start to look at overhauling the power plant.”

“Checking the compression ratio and finding out it was way too low, so after some measurements, I had some different setups 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 a 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 already.”

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

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