After a successful team launch yesterday evening, the Kawasaki Racing Team
got down to work proper today, during the first of three days of testing at the
Jerez circuit in southern Spain.
For John Hopkins today marked his first outing on Kawasaki’s Ninja ZX-RR
since the turn one highside that prematurely ended his pre-season test at
Phillip Island less than three weeks ago. The crash left the Anglo-American with
a badly torn abductor muscle in his groin, which continued to cause Hopkins
discomfort on the bike during today’s test.
Hopkins managed to work his way through a short test programme to evaluate
new components on his Ninja ZX-RR, but called it a day after riding through the
pain barrier to complete 29 laps of the 4.423km Jerez circuit.
The 24-year-old Kawasaki rider will continue testing tomorrow, but with his
focus now on regaining full fitness in time for the opening race in Qatar, will
stop should the injury continue to cause him problems on the bike.
With his teammate still suffering with the effects of his injury, Anthony
West shouldered the tyre testing duties for the Kawasaki Racing Team today. The
26-year-old Australian completed a total of 84 laps, as he worked to evaluate a
range of new tyres brought to the test by Kawasaki’s tyre partner,
Bridgestone.
West will focus tomorrow on refining the set-up of his Ninja ZX-RR further,
working with his crew to improve both the braking stability and agility of his
machine.
Kawasaki’s Technical Manager, Naoya Kaneko, is positive that, despite
Hopkins’s injury, the Kawasaki Racing team has made big steps forward with the
machine set-up today but the aim remains to strengthen the overall package prior
to the season opener.
Anthony West:
This morning we managed to make some small improvements to the set-up of
the bike here at Jerez, before switching our attention to tyre testing for
Bridgestone. We tested a number of new tyre combinations, with positive results,
and I’m sure the data we collected will prove useful to Bridgestone’s
development process. Tomorrow we will return to fine-tuning the bike for the
characteristics of the Jerez circuit, which is very different in character to
Sepang and Phillip Island. With John being injured we have many settings to try
and we want to make the best use of the track time so we can be in contention
right from the first race
John Hopkins:
