Today the DRIVE M7 SIC Racing Team concluded the third and final day of the official IRTA test in high spirits, pleased with their progress made and ready to race at Qatar.
With rain once again forecast for the day, riders Jakub Kornfeil and Zulfahmi Khairuddin utilised the conditions to further improve their wet set up.
Making a solid start, Kornfeil quickly set the pace in the first of the day’s sessions. Dicing for the top spot throughout the 1 hour 10 minute practice, the Czech rider looked in good form on his 2015 Factory KTM Moto3 machine. As the chequered flag closed in, a confident Kornfeil launched himself back to the top of the leader board, where he remained until the end of the session as the only rider to break into the 1m59s lap times. As the second session came to a close the 21 year old again took the lead, concluding his testing in Jerez.
Teammate Zulfahmi Khairuddin completed the final day with renewed confidence, having made significant progress with his wet set up. Feeling more comfortable on his #63 bike, the determined Malaysian picked up the pace, finishing the first practice in P9. As the Moto3 field took to the track for the second session of the day, Khairuddin continued to show his strength, temporarily topping the timesheets and concluding his testing at the Spanish Circuit in P3.
Feeling happy with their preparations for the season ahead, the team now head to Qatar where they will make their debut into the Moto3 World Championship, under the floodlights of the Losail International Circuit.
#84 Jakub Kornfeil – Best time: 1’59.870 (WET)
“Today we continued to work on our wet set up and improving the electronics. Sometimes the results were positive and sometimes negative, so we still have some work to do, but overall I have to be very happy; I finished the first practice first and the second practice also first. This is the best way to end the test for me and I’m so happy for this because it’s also very good for me mentally to finish so high. When I wanted to try and push today I could, which we could also see from the lap times, so this is very good. I’m feeling positive and I know that when we improve the electronics more, we will be fully prepared for the race at Qatar. It’s been a difficult three day test here at Jerez because of the weather conditions, so we could not test everything that we would have liked, but we have still achieved a lot and I must thank my team for their hard work.”
#63 Zulfahmi Khairuddin – Best time: 2’01.019 (WET)
“I felt really good with the bike today. We’ve been working on a lot of things in the wet conditions and from the start I felt more comfortable with the set up. It was again difficult with the varying track conditions but still we made progress and I am very happy about this. The changes we made worked very well and my team did a great job. I’m feeling a lot more comfortable on the bike now, so I’m ready to go racing in Qatar.”
Johan Stigefelt – Team Manager
“We have finished the final three day test here in Jerez. The weather has not been good but we have managed to work through a few of the things we wanted to try. We have done also some good work together with KTM, who have been very helpful to us here. We have also learned from them a couple of things in regards to electronics, so this is good. With these conditions it’s been very difficult to find any kind of setting for the dry; we have just had to work in the wet and make the most of the sessions to try and provide the best bike that we could for the riders and to help them to be comfortable on track.
Today we did two full sessions in the wet and we saw straight away that Jakub was really fast, he was first in both sessions which is very positive. Fahmi also improved the bike a lot and especially towards the end of the second session. In the full wet he was feeling more and more confident and was not that far off Jakub. We are leaving from here with maybe not perfect information, but we feel confident for Qatar because we tested already seven days in Sepang and now from here we have had wet sessions where we learned a lot more about the bike. I’m happy with the test here and I believe we are ready for Qatar in a weeks’ time.”
Circuit: Circuito de Jerez
Circuit Length: 4.4 km
