The Kawasaki Racing Team duo of Tom Sykes and Loris Baz will start their final test of the current year at Jerez on Monday 25th November, shortly before the compulsory testing ban kicks in. Current FIM Superbike World Champion Sykes missed the most recent team test at Motorland Aragon to be at the birth of his first child, daughter Millie, but now he returns to the ‘day job’ in preparation for another season. With the testing ban looming he is now keen to get back on his championship winning Ninja ZX-10R at what is recognised as one of the best testing circuits available. Tom was also on great form in his own most recent Jerez test a month ago and is now keen to fine tune his race machine, reconfirming the progress made in previous tests and looking to refine electronics strategies. Baz is now focusing on making more solid setup preparations for the 2014 season after the French rider made some great showings in testing at Motorland Aragon last week. The new season, by tradition, will begin at the end of February in Phillip Island, Australia. Tom Sykes: “I am very excited and motivated to go to this forthcoming test. We have got some days scheduled in at Jerez and our aim is to get some conformation of some items we tested before and we have a little work to do with electronics strategies. I am sure we will be doing a lot of laps and making the most of the final test of 2013. We had such a successful period last time we were on track in Jerez that that we know we should have a good package there again. We would be ready to race now if we had to but there are always improvements that can be found. I was so happy with the work we have already done in testing that I’m more confident for the new season already. I am already thinking about the first round at Phillip Island next year and in this coming test we will definitely be working towards it.” Loris Baz: “I think it is going to be good at Jerez because we worked on a lot of different things in the last couple of tests. At this final test before the winter break we will be able to put it all together. We want to make sure that we have a really well set-up bike for next season. I think we made a big step at the Motorland Aragon tests so it will be important to compare things at Jerez, simply because we have spent a lot of time there this winter. There will also be a lot of high level world superbike riders on track at the same time so it will be interesting to see how things will go.” Guim Roda, KRT Team Manager: “This will be our final test before the winter break so we are looking forward to underlining the ideas and confirming the components that we have tried out in the tests so far. This will be our third visit to Jerez since the end of the 2013 season so we will be able to make some real comparisons and confirmations. Tom will be back to action at these tests and he is so happy after the birth of his little daughter Millie. He is very motivated to use these tests as a real preparation for the forthcoming season because he is very focused on making more improvements next year. Loris is ready to ride again and also very motivated after having such good test results at Motorland Aragon recently. They are also both keen to get onto the track with their Ninja ZX-10Rs because this will be their last chance to do so for some weeks.”