BSB: Haslam: 'We've made big improvements already'

Leon Haslam has said he is confident the JG Speedfit Kawasaki team have made significant improvements with their package for the 2018 British Superbike season after their first test of the year in Jerez.

The factory-backed Kawasaki BSB team tested alongside the KRT World Superbike team in Jerez back in November, testing a number of new components including a new factory fairing, radiator and a different wheel manufacturer.

Returning to Jerez with KRT last week, the team looked to re-evaluate these items ahead of their testing schedule concluding at Monteblanco, Guadix and Donington Park before the 2018 season gets underway at the end of March.

“I wasn’t really fit for the November test, so this test was important to go over the components we tested back then to ensure we’d decided to go in the right direction,” Haslam told MCN.

“After these two days on track, I’m now fairly confident we already have a much better package and we’ve still got six more days of testing to improve that even further in March.

“I was really happy with the lap time, I went faster than I’ve ever been at Jerez on a BSB-spec bike and I wasn’t really pushing for times. We were only 0.2 sec slower than the factory Yamaha WSB guys!

“I have been training in Spain since the start of January and I’ll go back there now and continue doing that until well into Feb before returning to the UK before our final tests get underway in March.”