A one-day official test at the all-new Moscow Raceway in Russia for Tom Sykes and his fellow Kawasaki Racing Team rider Loris Baz gave each of them the chance to make preparations for race weekend.

Sykes left the tests happy with the work done to match his Ninja ZX-10R machine to a sometimes tricky circuit design and he ended up third fastest, despite concentrating more on full race set-up than going for a quick single lap time. Like the rest of his peers he felt that the circuit was very tight and twisty in some of the early sections, then opens out in some others.

Baz took more time to get accustomed to this new circuit, in what is the young French rider’s rookie SBK season, but the Silverstone race winner is confident that he will improve his outright pace during race weekend, now that his crew have good data to work with. Baz ended up 19th today.

Loris also made use of the extra day of testing to try out some other set-up options, which may help him in the run in to the finale of the championship, in France in October.

The track surface along the 3.931km Moscow circuit improved as the SBK and WSS riders made more and more laps during two sessions for each class, although the second SBK session was interrupted for a time, due to an oil spill.

David Salom (Kawasaki Team Pedercini) was 17th in the test rankings, less than 1.5 seconds from the fastest rider, Carlos Checa.

Tom Sykes:

“Overall, a positive day for myself and Kawasaki on a new track for everybody. We did a lot of work on the hard tyre and then when we put the softer tyre in we were surprised that we were getting good life out of it. We did make a number of small changes today, pretty much always in a positive direction, and big thanks to all my boys in the team. We have had a productive test. We have some things to do for the weekend but really not many, because today turned out well. We put a lot of laps in and hopefully that should make things more relaxed for race weekend itself.”

Loris Baz:

“We just had a few issues this morning. The track is very nice, very technical and everything, but just a bit too slow. I love fast tracks so it is not my favourite. But we are riding at this track so we have to work with that. The lap times are really close and we tried a different set-up this afternoon, just to test some options we have been thinking about. I am more confident than the position we find ourselves in on the track today. Our general pace is good but we still have something to do on pure lap times for one fast lap.”

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