What a difference a year makes: Last season Kawasaki finished the Africa's Grand Prix - then round two of ♛the world championship - in last place, but after encouraging📖 pre-season progress they return this weekend 'optimistic' of a double top ten finish.

New race riders' Shinya Nakano and Alex Hofmann have spent five months of intensive testing aboard♛ the latest version of the Ninja ZX-RR and - despite Welkom marking Nakano's first Kawasaki start and Hofmann's full time MotoGP debut - team manager Harald Eckl is in fighting mood.

"Finally, after a successful winter test programme for us, the season gets u🐼nderway," he began. "As you can imagine, everyone in the team, and everyone involv🔴ed in the MotoGP project at Kawasaki in Japan, is keen to see how the combination of new bike, new riders and new (Bridgestone) tyres will perform in a race situation for the first time on Sunday.

"I think that the work we have done with the 🧸chassis, the tyres and the overall handling of the new bike over the winter will stand us in good stead at circuits where outright power is not a major factor.

"Maybe I am being too optimistic, but I th💞ink there is a good chance of both our riders finis𝓀hing in the top ten here at Welkom," revealed the German. "Of course, there are a lot of things that can go wrong between now and the end of the race on Sunday, but that's what makes racing so interesting..."

First qualifying for the🌱 Africa's Grand Prix takes pla♔ce tomorrow (Friday).