Source: Supplied.

The official Kawasaki Racing Team will get its 2016 Superbike World Championship preparations off to an early start with their first winter test session between Tuesday and Thursday this week.

New world champion Jonathan Rea, will not be in attendance during the Motorland Aragon test as his wife is expecting their second child, however Tom Sykes will lead initial development.

This test will be the first bridge between the most recent season and the next, as Kawasaki will field the all-new Ninja ZX-10R next year. Sykes and his crew will work with KHI’s latest technical developments, including selected 2016 season parts, in advance of the imminent transition to the fulltime track use of the new machine.

With a host of advances on the new road-going Ninja ZX-10R being a direct result of the experiences of the official KRT squad in the past few seasons of WorldSBK racing, the forthcoming full winter test schedule will be the arguably most important undertaken by Kawasaki’s official team in recent years.