Kenan Sofuoglu (San Carlo Puccetti Racing Kawasaki) had limited dry track time during his team’s second winter test but in an intense final afternoon Sofuoglu set very strong lap times as his Italian-based team worked on evaluating new settings and race parts for the 2015 FIM Supersport World Championship season.

Track time was limited on day one due to wet and then very slowly drying conditions and it took until the final few hours of day two to get a consistently dry surface to ride on.
In working between two specifications of engine set-up Sofuoglu made an improvement in his pace compared to his fastest race lap time at the Jerez race last September. Italian rider Marco Faccani shared track time with Sofuoglu at the Jerez test on the team’s second Ninja ZX-6R, to speed up the development and testing programme.

Sofuoglu posted a best lap of 1’43.7, despite working on what he felt was still not quite optimum track and grip conditions at the challenging 4.423km long Jerez circuit in the south west of Spain.

The Kawasaki San Carlo Puccetti Racing team will return once again to Iberia to test in January, looking forward to capitalising on the good work done at both the Motorland Aragon test last week and then the busy final afternoon of action just completed at Jerez.

Kenan Sofuoglu: “We worked very hard and well in this test. The first day was fully wet and then not fully dry and we only got good track conditions on the second day after two o’clock. So we had only four hours of dry track time to work on everything. There was some grip issues so I think the track condition was still not the very best. We worked hard right to the end. With the bad weather and delays it did not go the way I wanted all the time but if you look at the best lap time we were half a second faster compared to qualification last year, and I went over a second faster than my fastest lap of the race. Even then I can’t say we were at our limit. There are still things to improve. We now know what to do at the next Jerez test. The team is working very well and this is what I needed. I am so happy to work in this young and fresh team and they really want to win.”

Manuel Puccetti: Team Manger: “Both our recent tests have been very positive. At this Jerez test we really only had half a day of dry conditions but I think it was very good in the end. He was more than one second faster than the fastest lap of the race. A 1’43.7 is a very good lap time. It was a lot of work to try and choose which character of engine we should have for next year, which electronics, and we worked on a lot of other things too. The whole team is very happy with the work we did and we have made a very good base for next year. Now we restart in January with another test in Spain.”