John Laverty: “We’ll be pushing for podiums”

For the first time in his career John Laverty gets a chance to do two successive seasons with the same team.

And in a sport where confience in your bike and crew is everything – that’s an important factor to consider.

After finishing 10th in this year’s British Superbike series, he will line up on an up-rated Buildbase Kawasaki with new team-mate,  Adam Jenkinson.

He said: “I think we’re well set. We had a good learning year. We started the season as complete underdogs but have proved that the bike is good – and to be honest, I did a lot better than even I had expected.

“By the mid-point of the year we had reached a good point with the bike (set-up).

“It took us that long because everything came together so late so we never got a chance to do any testing.

“But I think we got the best out of the bike that we could and from Mallory onwards we had a really good base setting.

“For next year power is certainly not an issue. We just need to make it even more useable and we’ve got the information and data now to sort it.

“The bike wants to wheelie so we need to calm that down. I think we can chase podiums with what we have for next year. I certainly want to be pushing for them.”