West critical of Kawasaki

The Australian, who is moving to the World Supersports championship with Team Stiggy, told Motosprint that the team must work harder to make the ZX-RR Ninja work with Bridgestone's tyres.

"I hope Melandri doesn't come to Kawasaki too fired up, because he'll quickly realize that if Kawasaki don't change radically, he will again be at the bottom of the points table," West told the Italian magazine. "Kawasaki's situation is embarrassing, as has been my situation throughout the year.

"I thank Kawasaki for having given me the chance to race in MotoGP, but they must do something otherwise they'll never come out of it.

"With our bike we've never been able to use the tyres used by [Valentino] Rossi and [Casey] Stoner," he added. "I tried to at Brno, and I would have liked to use them at Misano, but we weren't able anymore.

"We use a front that no one else uses. Perhaps only Suzuki are in as bad a shape as us..."

West added that things are so bad that he has been quicker since he reverted to a version of last year's bike.

"During testing at Brno I decided to get back to the 2007 bike and my performance has improved, and in fact I've been ahead of [John] Hopkins for the last few races," he said. He wanted to carry on with the new bike and he has only problems.

"In this final part of the season I set for myself [a target] to stay ahead of Hopkins and Melandri. In Australia I beat both of them, and also in Japan I was often quicker than them.

"I like being able to say that I'm losing the ride to give room to two riders who are going slower than me..."