Sarath Kumar completes successful test with Monlau Competition in Spain

Sarath Kumar who signed up for the Spanish Moto3 championship earlier this year with Team Monlau Competition successfully completes his first test on the Moto3 machine.

Sarath along with his Manager Ramji Govindarajan left for Spain for a week long training program and testing to prepare for the forthcoming Spanish CEV Moto3 season which is considered as the breeding ground for MotoGP. Riders like Dani Pedrosa, Casy Stoner, Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Marquez and others were products of this highly competitive CEV Buckler Spanish Motorcycle Championship.

Sarath is also the first Indian rider to start and race in a Grand Prix in 2011 but was forced to quit the 125cc World Championship after 2 races due to lack of funds. In 2012 he had to dropped midway from Mahindra Racing Team as he could not find a sponsor for the Italian CIV 125 championship.

This year with the support of SK–Sarath 69, an initiative by South Indian Actor and Politician R.Sarath Kumar along with Ramji of Ten10 Racing, the young racer is planning to make a proper campaign in the Spanish Championships and get honed for the Moto3 World Championship.

Sarath´s physical fitness session included sessions on mountain bike and dirt bike, while he also trained along with MotoGP sensation Marc Marquez, Alex Rinz and Alex Marquez who were all trained by Monlau Competition.

Sarath said: "I am happy about the test and feel very confident now. My team Monlau Competition is a top team in the sport and highly professional. They have developed riders like Marc Marquez, Alex Rinz and Alex Marquez. They know how to structure and build a rider on and off track. They gave me special training with mountain bikes and dirt bike and trained along with the top riders which makes me very confident on seeing them how they prepare."

On what he learnt from this test, Sarath commented "I was given complete knowledge and details about the bike, how it works, how it performs, what happens with different settings with suspension, frame, gears etc and how i should change my riding style to suit them. I was asked to be very open and honest about what i felt and they guided me on how to ride the bike and rectified my mistakes by checking the data."

"I simply did what they told and i was able to improve a lot, i just went in with an open mind and was asked to forget all past experiences. This team is completely focused on training its riders and they know how to get the best from them and they were very very supportive. I had to give a full debrief after every session about the performance of the bike on the track."

The testing didnt go as easy as planned while experiencing a bad weather and also Sarath incurring an ankle sprain due to a wrong fixing of the gear shift which prohibited him to give a full fledged performance.

Sarath said "As for my test i was not given any targets as this was my first time on Moto3 machine and at this track, on day 1 we had a problem with the quick shift and i sprained my ankle and i had to rest the day off. On day 2 the weather was good and we changed the setup of the bike to suit the conditions but on entry lap my ankle started hurting me again and i had to consult the track doctor. After a while i was asked put in some miles on the track to familiarize with the bike without concentrating on the lap time. I did and started to understand the bike slowly while peaking consistently with a 1min 52secs, just 2.5secs off the track record.

The team was very happy with my consistent lap times on the new bike, i just started feeling the bike and did what they told and i am happy too. I have couple of more tests coming up before the first race on April 26th. I am looking forward for that and i am confident that i can improve a lot in the coming tests."