Joan Lascorz left the Monza round of the Superbike World Championship with the best Kawasaki finish, ninth in race two, in what was a challenging raceday under the hot Italian sun.

Tom Sykes was 13th in race one and then 11th in race two, keeping him top Kawasaki rider in the overall points rankings, one place ahead of Joan. Lascorz was to fall in race one, but he was unhurt and learned from the experience to post his top ten finish in race two, despite not being able to use his favoured soft rear tyre. This is still only Joan’s fourth WSBK meeting on the all-new Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R race machine.

Tom had two difficult races partly due to the softer choice race tyre that the team had used most in practice being taken from the allocation, due to concerns about the possible effects of the hot 45 degree track temperatures around Monza’s many high speed curves.

Third official Kawasaki regular Chris Vermeulen did not ride at Monza due to a nasty gash in his elbow, suffered when he fell in practice on Friday.

Roberto Rolfo and Mark Aitchison scored 13th and 14th places respectively in race two for the Team Pedercini Kawasaki squad in its home race.

Marco Bussolotti (Team Pedercini Kawasaki) was the top Kawasaki finisher in the Superstock 1000 FIM Cup class, going seventh.


Joan Lascorz:

“All weekend we had been working with the soft race tyre then this morning when we tested the harder tyre, which we had to use, the bike needed a lot of adjustment. We are still developing and understanding the bike because it is still quite new. We made some changes after warm-up and found some better rear grip, but lost it in the front and I crashed. In race two I did my best and I was reasonably satisfied with a top ten finish and we will be better in the next one. I would like to be fighting more in the front group.”

Tom Sykes:

“We didn’t have the speed or the race package to work with this weekend obviously there is some work to be done. We all need to pick our heads up and stay focused and positive. I think people may expect a lot of us very early in the season with a new bike and I think that is putting a bit of pressure on. I will keep my head down and keep working and I am still confident we can make it work. I got caught up in the crash at the first chicane and lost time on the exit, which made things harder. I think I had a bit of a bit better pace early on if I had got latched onto a leading group.”