Kawasaki `screamer´ engine development continues slowly

Kawasaki´s test rider Olivier Jacque was a busy man on Monday at his home track, testing the Japanese company´s `screamer´ engine again and working on some chassis updates in order to assist John Hopkins and Anthony West to increase competitiveness.

Though Hopkins and West were both also present for testing, as they went in search of immediate improvements after another frustrating weekend which again yielded results below expectations in France, Jacque´s focus is on longer-term development, in particular with the much-talked-about `screamer´ engine.

The new motor has been run at tests in Malaysia and Jerez already this year, with Hopkins himself giving it a ride in Spain, and Jacque provided motogp.com with his latest thoughts on the project at Le Mans, saying, `We have been testing the screamer engine again and I think everybody heard the sound! It was quite good, but of course we are still just working on it. We got a lot of information about it.´

When pressed on whether he foresees the engine becoming competitive enough to use in races, Jacque answered, `Top end power is very good, and we are working on the speed. Corner exit speed needs to be good, quicker than the `big bang´, and at the moment that is quite critical, so we will try to work on the electronics. Every time we have a testing opportunity we try to understand how we can work with this type of engine.´

Meanwhile, Jacque´s test team crew chief Tom Jojic gave his viewpoint on the `screamer´ development, commenting, `There is potential there and Kawasaki are still trying to see if it is something that they could use. There are positives and negatives and we just keep trying new things. It is hard to say if we will see it in the near future, we will just stick to the test plan and see what we find.´

Giving an insight into how the agenda for test work is decided, Jojic added, `The race team lead the development. We support them by looking at everything they want us to test. They put in certain requests to try and make improvements. Kawasaki, KHI itself, also have certain things they want to try and they have got a development plan, so they ask us to test things. Usually the Japanese test team work on things first and if it gets past them then Olivier can relate more to what the race team needs.´