Source: Kawasaki Racing.

The new look KRT team of Tom Sykes, Loris Baz and SBK Evo rider David Salom completed their European winter test schedule at Jerez on Thursday with good results despite changeable weather conditions.

Over two days of track action rain and occasional wind intervened at unlucky times, but both SBK category riders Sykes and Baz still set more then decent lap times in the low 1m42 when the conditions improved, all despite a track surface that was never truly dry on the second day of action.

The opening day was fully wet to start and then dried very slowly as the day went on, which allowed the official Ninja ZX-10R riders to work on their wet set-up for a time. Day two started out fully wet but conditions slowly improved which allowed the riders to continue with their testing plans.

Sykes and Baz set their best lap times on used tyres and were only stopped from improving their best pace even more when a heavy fall of rain arrived toward the end of day two.

“Overall we got some good work done even though the weather was wet and inconsistent,” Sykes said. “We found some small but good things at this test. The set-up changes we have made in the winter have improved our performance in the kind of windy conditions we had today. The small changes we made in the balance of the bike this winter have helped with the front-end feeling.

“Both the bike and I are ready to go racing and I am looking forward to being in Australia this time next week. We still have two good testing days ahead of us shortly before the race weekend and there we can really just put to bed our last remaining few items.

“We will be fully ready for race weekend. The atmosphere and environment in our team is very calm and we are looking forward to see how we can start the season.”

On the official SBK Evo Kawasaki Salom got in some valuable full-wet testing as his technical team made important changes to his overall machine set-up to suit both wet and eventually almost dry conditions.

One more test remains for all three KRT riders, at Phillip Island in Australia on 17 and 18 February, before the first round of the 2014 championship takes place on 23 February at the same venue.

2014 eni FIM Superbike World Championship
Test – Jerez, Spain

Overall results (unofficial):
1. Tom Sykes (Kawasaki Racing Team) 1m42.1
2. Loris Baz (Kawasaki Racing Team) 1m42.3
3. Marco Melandri (Aprilia Racing Team) 1m42.4
4. Jonathan Rea (Pata Honda) 1m42.4
5. Sylvain Guintoli (Aprilia Racing Team) 1m42.5
6. Jeremy Guarnoni (MRS Kawasaki – EVO) 1m43.5
7. Leon Haslam (Pata Honda) 1m43.7
8. David Salom (Kawasaki Racing Team – EVO) 1m44.1
9. Alessandro Andreozzi (Team Pedercini Kawasaki – EVO) 1m44.5