WSB: Ducati enjoy successful test in Misano

Ducati’s World Superbike team have completed a successful test at Misano ahead of the next round at the Rimini circuit in two weeks’ time.

Despite rain after lunch limiting their time on track, Chaz Davies and Davide Giugliano spent most of the day working on race set up with a particular focus on tyre life across race distance as they look to challenge the Kawasakis of Jonathan Rea and Tom Sykes as the second half of the season gets underway.

“After so many races, it seems like a long time since our last test,” Davies said. “It’s been definitely positive to have a couple of days to try things and ideas that can’t be tested on a race weekend. It’s a shame that the rain cut our track time short, but we’ve found a couple of good solutions for our base setup that should help us make another step forward, and this is the most important thing. At this point of the season, everyone is capable of getting up to speed quite quickly, even though these tests were clearly useful also to get better prepared for next race. Last year Misano wasn’t an easy weekend for us, so our goal is to make up for it in a couple of weeks’ time.”

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Davies added: “We were able to evaluate a couple of ideas, especially in terms of electronics, which turned out to be quite good. It’s always important to make in-depth tests on the base setup, because during the races the focus is on pure speed, and I believe we took another step in the right direction. I also tried a thumb-activated rear brake with positive feedback, even though I clearly still need to get adjusted to it. We’ve been progressively faster over the last few races, so our next goal is to have a whole weekend without any drops in our performance. Unfortunately the rain forced us to close shop early, but those two days were both important and productive ahead of the Misano round.”