New South Wales rider Andrew Pitt was just two places out of the World Championship points in his and the all-new Kawasaki Ninja ZX-RR’s second GP finish, claiming 17th place in today’s Australian GP.

Run in dry and sunny conditions at the sweeping and picturesque seaside circuit of Phillip Island, the race represented another step forward for the newest of the new 990cc four-strokes: the Ninja ZX-RR is taking part only in the final four races of this season, in preparation for a full entry next year.

The latest full-prototype-spec machine, run for the first time last month in its lightweight chassis and with new fuel injection, qualified closer than ever to the leaders. The aggressively styled lime-green bike ran perfectly throughout a lonely race for the Australian, who was brought in as a last minute substitute after factory tester Akira Yanagawa was injured in a race crash in the bike’s first outing at Motegi a fortnight ago.

One more round remains of the 2002 MotoGP World Championship. After that the new Kawasaki will undergo a winter of extensive testing and development in preparation for the factory’s full time GP return in 2003.

Andrew Pitt – 17th 43:14,237: "The biggest bonus today is that I finished 35 seconds closer to the race winner than I did in Malaysia last week. But it was hard work to ride on my own again. I had a good start, and on the first lap I actually passed Carlos Checa, and raced with Tetsuya Harada for a while. But they passed me back. I still didn’t ride the bike like a big bike should be ridden, I was carrying too much corner speed on the very edge of the tyre. Only towards the end of the race, I started to square the corners off and open the throttle earlier, and doing that, I chopped a second off my lap time immediately!"

Harald Eckl - Team Manager: "In Malaysia, Andrew was five seconds behind the leaders, here in Phillip Island he cut it down to 2.6 seconds on his fastest lap in comparison to Rossi’s one, and I’m sure we will be able to cut another half a second when we go to Valencia. Andrew’s problem is that he still doesn’t ride the bike at its limit. He is actually slower on new tyres with a lot of grip, where slides are more difficult to provoke and to control, than later in the race. That was clearly visible towards the end, when he battled nicely with John Hopkins. But we are definitely on track, with Andrew’s riding as much as with the technical development of our bike. We were ninth in top speed today, less than 10 kph down on Valentino Rossi!"