From a press release issued by Proton Team KR:

Jerez a step closer for new Proton KR V5

Proton Team KR will be back to full rider strength for the Spanish GP on Sunday, May 2, the opening round of the European season at Jerez- and team principal Kenny Roberts hopes they will also be a step closer to achieving the full potential of the compact and highly integrated new KR V5 MotoGP racer.

Team regular Nobuatsu Aoki will be continuing his drive to put the beautiful howler back in the championship points, after missing out by just two places in the opening round in South Africa.

He will be rejoined by class rookie Kurtis Roberts, who was forced to withdraw from the South African GP when a recovering injury gave unexpected trouble. Kurtis, second son of Kenny, dislocated his shoulder in tests in mid-March, but has worked hard to build up strength for the second race.

The new machine, the second generation of a machine itself less than a full year old, has already joined the 200mph club, with 204.12 mph at pre-season tests. The balance of the overall technical equation will be improved for Jerez, thanks to continued improvements to the revised engine, closely tailored to fit the innovative and compact hewn-from-solid chassis.

“We’re still not fully on top of sorting the engine to perform as predicted on the computer, but we have new parts coming for Jerez, and more for Le Mans (two weeks later),” said Roberts.

“Actually I don’t think our machine is too far out. The chassis stands out as a big improvement. The real question is what tyres Dunlop will bring to Jerez – and I’m expecting an improvement from them as well,” he said.

The Spanish GP will be the team’s second race with Dunlop, and Roberts is confident of further fruits of the new partnership – Proton Team KR’s headquarters at Banbury is less than an hour from Dunlop’s Birmingham race tyre facility, encouraging close cooperation between tyre and machine designers.

“Already the tyres they brought to South Africa worked better than we expected, and they will have yet more new stuff for Jerez,” explained Roberts.

The Spanish GP is the first round of the punishing European season, running almost unbroken week in week out until September – and what is already one of the biggest events on the calendar is expected to redouble in popularity, as fans flock to the 2.748-mile / 4.423 km circuit outside the sherry capital of Jerez. Last year, fully 130,000 fans made it through the gates on race day.

The next race is the French GP at Le Mans in two weeks.

Nobuatsu Aoki – Rubber side up
Actually, the performance of the bike is not so bad now – the engine was already coming better in South Africa, and it should be better again for Jerez, because they are doing a lot of work. Already the chassis feeling and balance is very good. The important thing for this race will be Dunlop tyre developments. At Welkom, they already took a step compared with tests. I’m looking forward to seeing what they bring to Jerez.

Kurtis Roberts – Fighting for fitness
In South Africa there was one particular corner which put my shoulder in a real awkward position, so it felt it would pop out again. Since then I’ve been doing a lot of physio and training to strengthen those muscles, and also testing on dirt bikes. I’ve tried to reproduce the same position and bad feeling, but the shoulder feels good. I want to go racing right away now.