Kawasaki Racing Team riders Jonathan Rea and Tom Sykes will embark on their latest winter test sessions, starting on Monday 23 November, riding for the second time at Jerez de la Frontera since the end of the season. 2015 FIM Superbike World Champion Jonathan Rea will start his test one day after attending the FIM Gala at Jerez on Sunday night, where he collects his FIM medal for winning the title in such spectacular form.
The Jerez test schedule for the KRT Squad will be Monday and Tuesday on track, a day of resting and evaluation on Wednesday and then two final days on the circuit again on Thursday and Friday. This will be the last chance for Rea and Sykes, the latter being the 2013 World Champion for Kawasaki, to ride their new 2016 WSBK specification Ninja ZX-10R before the start of the winter test ban period, which runs from early December through to the middle of January.
Both Sykes and Rea lifted their respective world titles at Jerez but this is also a special circuit in terms of what it offers from its layout. With no long straights but many types of corner, and some heavy braking zones thrown in, Jerez is something of an ideal test track.
At the most recent test in Motorland Aragon both riders moved closer to their final choice of race components for the 2016 season, while still carrying out both function and performance tests. That cycle of work should conclude at this test in Jerez, with the next outings in Europe in late January focusing more on race performance at the first scheduled round of the championship in Australia, on February 28th.
The Superbike World Championship calendar has been released now, and features 14 rounds spread over nine months, from February to late October.
Jonathan Rea stated: “Kawasaki and the team have been developing the bike and the next thing for us to focus on at Jerez is my riding position to see if we can achieve a bit more grip, and just more feeling with the bike. Aside from that, we have tested many items so far and we will also test front forks here. We will put all the best items together to work on our performance. I would imagine we would finish this test with some longer race simulations. This is a very important test because we need to be clear and precise in our work to make sure we have the right material at the next ones.”
Tom Sykes stated, “Our base after the recent Motorland tests felt really good and now we need to try and improve some things in all areas. In the last run at Motorland we tried a few things and our consistency appears very good. Overall our tests have been positive. It is really nice to see that the direction we have worked along in the past with the Ninja ZX-10R is the same direction our new improvements are also moving in. We can go to Jerez now to test again with a lot more information, with a lot more track time available, and really try to get closer to a bike set-up that we need to take to Phillip Island.”
Guim Roda, Team Manager KRT, stated: “We start the last test of 2015 here, so this is a significant one. It will also be a long one because we have 2 + 2 days of testing in one week, and the weather looks like it will be very good. We will continue our winter test program in order to fix the best set up possible to start next season in Australia. The introduction of the new Ninja ZX-10R on the market will mean we will have time during the season to continue to improve the race bike, but for sure the most important period is now, in the winter. We are really optimistic of the bike’s potential and we are convinced that the base of new Ninja ZX-10R is even better than the old model. This should make sure our performance will be better this year and that the lap times will be even faster. Marcel, Pere, Yoda-san and all the technical staff of KRT, suppliers, and KHI engineers are working really hard to build an even better WorldSBK Ninja than last year’s.”