After last week’s official statement from Kawasaki that they will be withdrawing from the MotoGP World Championship in 2009 due the economic crisis and Dorna’s CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta’s efforts in trying to get the bikes on the grid at least in a private form with Michael Bartholemy or Jorge ‘Aspar’ Martinez running the team, MCN is now reporting that test rider Olivier Jacque is going to continue testing the new bike in Australia.

Former Motogp rider turned test rider, Jacque will be at the Eastern Creek track in Australia on Saturday to test the new 2009 Ninja ZX-RR and that he will then will move to Phillip Island for further testing.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this is a good sign and that Kawasaki hasn’t abandoned all hope and that the fact of dishing out a pricely sum of dollars to pay off their Motogp contract that runs to 2011 and paying riders Hopkins and Melandri help them find away to get their bikes back on track in some form.

Source | mcn

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It was a successful first day of testing for the Kawasaki MotoGp team in Phillip Island as the three-day testing programme started with perfect conditions. The Kawasaki riders and test rider Olivier Jacque will ride more than 1000 Km on this day only.

Marco Melandri will work with the suspension engineers to improve the front and Jacque will concentrate on the revised chassis and the new electronic package. For Hopkins was it a painful day. His fractured ankle from his crash at Assen from June is fixed with a plate but still giving problems. He worked with his new chief Naoya Kaneko to improve laptimes.

Olivier Jacque, test rider and development rider said: “Today we’ve focused on evaluating a new chassis on the Ninja ZX-RR, with positive results. We’re also working with a revised electronics package on the bike, which gives us more options for fine-tuning the power delivery characteristics, and again the initial results have been positive.”

All the data from these three days will be collected and will be used for the Kawasaki development programme for 2009, when the Ninja ZX-RR will perform for the first time at Sepang in February.

Source | kwasaki_motogp

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The 27 year-old Anthony West replaced the injured Olivier Jacque in the Kawasaki team halfway through the 2007 season. The Valencia race on Sunday will be his last appearance for Kawasaki and Anthony hopes to finish with one last good result.

West hasn’t achieved the results he was expecting in MotoGP, and next year will ride somewhere else, but with the aspiration to return to MotoGP one day. About the Valencia race he says: “We’ve been missing something all year, and that means we’ve been less competitive than we were expecting. Realistically it will be difficult to run at the front in Valencia, but a top ten finish should be achievable. I’m only one point behind Marco Melandri in the championship standings, and I hope I can pull in enough points in the last race to beat the rider who’ll replace me at Kawasaki next season.”

Anthony West, was born in Maryborough. The Australian rider started racing at an early in dirt-track. He moved to road racing and won the Australian 250 production title in 1998, was 3rd in the 125 Championship and qualified for the Australian Grand Prix. West continued and went to the Shell Advance Honda Team in 2000, finishing at 6th overall. Today Anthony is riding in the Kawasaki factory team and is at 18th position with 50 points.

Source | motogpupdate and motogp

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