Roda: “We are in a worse position” than 2019, as Rea, Lowes complete Misano test

Granted, Yamaha have won just one race so far this season as Ducati have instead dominated the opening 12 races with 11 wins, all of which have come at the hands of Alvaro Bautista. 

Winless in the first 12 races of a season for the first time since Jonathan Rea moved to the team in 2015, Kawasaki’ struggled have never been more evident.

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Even in 2019 when Rea won his first race of the season at the 12th time of asking, the six-time champion was second or third in every race prior to that.

However, Rea has accumulated just four podiums so far this season, while teammate Alex Lowes has stepped on the rostrum just once.

Both factory Kawasaki riders missed the recent two-day WorldSBK test at Misano, as test rider Florian Marino took to the Italian circuit in their place.

But Rea and Lowes were back in action at the same circuit as part of a private one-day test just four days ago, which Team Principal, Roda, felt was a must given their poor start to this season. 

Speaking to WorldSBK.com, Roda said: "Testing is so important, especially when things do not work out as planned, and especially because we don’t give up. 

"In 2019 Alvaro Bautista won at the first four rounds, but we won the title. Of course, we are in a worse position than 2019, we are not naive, but the concept is to never give up until the game is over. 

"Not winning empowers us to work really hard to come back stronger. We need to explore all the areas to find the way to fight to win every race. That’s the target. 

"We could not finish some upgrades we were working on with the bike, so we will try to find other options to test before Misano. We are especially trying to find more than 45-degree tarmac conditions to test on. 

"The track temperature at Misano was not enough to work with items we wanted to work on with Alex and Jonny but checking the functionality of some software adjustments has been very useful."