WSBK: Kawasaki Update

As the long summer break in WorldSBK race action concludes, there will be a short test session for the official Kawasaki FIM Superbike World Championship team at Motorland Aragon between 29-30 August.

With just one day remaining from their mandated limit of ten days of testing, Rea and Lowes will only ride on the final test day, Wednesday, 30 August.

Lowes’s regular rider coach and team development rider since 2022, Florian Marino, will test the official Ninja ZX-10RR on Tuesday, 29 August. He also has excellent experience in the WorldSBK paddock and the EWC series in his own right.

Florian will be joined on track by MTM Kawasaki WorldSSP rider Adrian Huertas as recognition of winning the WorldSSP300 championship on a Kawasaki in 2021 and his increasingly strong performances since he jumped to WorldSSP racing in 2022.

Iberia, in general, has been suffering from heat waves recently. Still, despite the harsh conditions, the KRT squad will look forward to some very hot track and ambient conditions to close in on the elusive optimum settings for exceedingly high-temperature races.

Motorland Aragon features a 5.077km long WorldSBK track layout and an extensive motorsport and testing facility. It has hosted several WorldSBK rounds in recent years and will do so again in 2023 between 22-24 September. It was also the venue of a recent KRT test session in late June.

The next round of the 2023 WorldSBK championship takes place at another regular WorldSBK circuit, Magny Cours in France, between 8-10 September.

Jonathan Rea stated: “This Aragon test comes at a precious time because, with Magny Cours fast approaching after a long summer break, it’s always beneficial to get back into the swing of things and the flow of riding my ZX-10RR. I will try to get the rhythm back, but I also have one eye on the Motorland race weekend that comes soon after the Magny Cours race. So it’s all about building into this last part of the season and being strong. We’ll continue testing some items that we’ve previously tried. And with one day left on my testing allocation, we only have one day to use. We expect hot weather, which is also good to test to improve our bike settings further. We will keep working. The next three rounds will come in quick succession, so hitting the ground running is important. We’ll see what the engineers from KMC have for us and get stuck into the test.”

Alex Lowes stated: “There will be some stuff for 2024 that we are testing, just some ideas. So that will take half a day because we have only one full day of testing. The other half of that day will be just getting back up to speed and trying a few things on the bike’s rear to improve the edge grip. Marcel, my crew chief, has some ideas, and I’ve been speaking with him about a plan to improve that. Hopefully, the conditions will be hot. That’s the target, and I look forward to returning to action. It was not my best round in Autodrom Most recently, but we’ve got four rounds left. I want to get back on the podiums to finish the year strongly. Some good tracks are coming up for me and the Kawasaki. We haven’t met our goals at the start of this year, so a good end to this year will also be what’s needed to set us up for next year. We have one eye on 2024, one eye on the final four rounds of this season and a couple of ideas that Marcel has to improve things. So, it will be a busy testing day as we only have one day left. It’s gonna be nice to get back out on the bike before Magny Cours.”

Guim Roda, KRT Team Manager, stated: “Now we go back to work after the Autodrom Most race weekend. This test will be a good chance to prepare for Magny Cours and the last rounds of the year, and at the same time, we will introduce new ideas to improve the bike for the 2024 season. Unfortunately, in the year we needed them the most, we only can test for 10 days. We have already used nine days, so although we will be at the track for two days, Jonathan and Alex will test only one day each. We’ll work with Florian Marino on the first day and allow Adrian Huertas to test the WorldSBK bike to see his abilities. We promised him that if he made the WorldSSP podium, we would allow him to test. He could not achieve a podium, but finally, we considered he deserved the chance, so let’s see how he manages it.”