No 'new' Kawasaki for 2008.

By Peter McLaren

Hopkins, eighth on day one, used a late lap to edge out former team-mate Chris Vermeulen by 0.144secs - with a time that was also inside the best set by a Kawasaki or Suzuki rider during last month's Malaysian Grand Prix, and just a tenth shy of Casey Stoner's lap record.

Off track, the #21 also shed some light on Kawasaki's plans for 2008 - and revealed that there will be no 'new' machine.

Instead, Team Green is opting for a process of continual development to the respected 2007 model - which scored a best finish of second - with a constant flow of new parts due to appear between now and the Qatar season opener on March 9.

"The way that we're managing it is that we're going to start with the '07 bike - we're not bringing out a completely new '08 bike," Hopkins told Crash.net. "What we're doing is to keep improving on what we have now and get new parts throughout the winter. So we'll always have new parts to test, but there won't be a completely different bike [launched next year] or anything like that."

And that process of continual improvement has already begun.

"The parts that I've received so far were completely new," Hopper revealed. "I asked for some new clutch parts and similar things after riding the bike for the first time at Valencia, just to help get into the corners better and smoothen everything up a little. Those new parts were here [at Sepang] and were exactly what I wanted, which is amazing in such a short amount of time."

Hopkins had been a Suzuki grand prix rider for five years, having joined the factory team in 2003 - the second year in MotoGP for both the Anglo-American and the GSV-R. Kawasaki's grand prix machine, like the GSV-R, uses Bridgestone tyres, but Hopkins says they have little else in common.

"The bikes are definitely night and day different, from Suzuki to Kawasaki," he declared. "There are some negatives and some positives with the Kawasaki, but by the end of testing I'm quite confident that we'll turn the negatives into positives.

"The Kawasaki engine is definitely very fast," he continued. "The ultimate goal is to make the power manageable. Right now we're getting a lot of wheelies and - coming out of the corners - the traction control system does work very, very well, but there are a lot of places where we can make the power more manageable."

Hopkins arrives at Kawasaki fresh from his best ever season in MotoGP, during which he took his first four podiums and fourth overall in the final world championship standings - and wants even more with the ZX-RR.

"Last year was good, by far my best season yet," he said. "I got a couple of podiums but I was a little disappointed not to get my first win. Over the championship I made a few mistakes, crashed out in Jerez, and there were a few places where I lost quite a lot of points, but I still managed to salvage fourth place. Now it's a new step, new bike and hopefully we can take it to a new all-time high next year.

"I'm enjoying it. The team's great, the atmosphere is good and they are really dedicated towards improving the machine and taking everything forward. We share the same vision," he concluded.