Today was the third and final day of testing for the Ducati Team at the Phillip Island circuit. The Australian session had been organized by IRTA and Bridgestone with the specific aim of developing the Japanese tyres in view of the Australian Grand Prix in October, and it was reserved for the official teams of the three manufacturers taking part in the MotoGP World Championship.
Following the good results obtained at Sepang last week, in Australia the two Ducati Team riders were able to carry out the work requested by Bridgestone, which included an appraisal of compound, construction and profile technology, and race simulation, as well as a continuation of development work on the Desmosedici GP14 in ‘Open’ configuration. The tyres available for the three teams present at the tests were however the same for all.
After three days of intense work, Andrea Dovizioso concluded the test with an overall third fastest time of 1m29.387s, three-tenths of a second away from the quickest rider, while his team-mate Cal Crutchlow ended up fifth with a best time of 1m29.576s.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 3rd (1m29.387s)
“Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling at 100% these days, but when I was able to lap my feeling with the bike was good and so I’m pretty satisfied with this test at Phillip Island. We continued development work on the GP14 and on this track, which is very different to Sepang, we were again able to obtain results that make us feel confident for the future. Our pre-season tests have been quite positive and now I can’t wait for the championship to start.”
Cal Crutchlow (Ducati Team #35) – 5th (1m29.576s)
“The team worked great at Phillip Island. We had a lot of stuff to try for Bridgestone over the three days to evaluate the rear tyre. I’m happy enough to go away from here feeling positive at this circuit. At no point did I push for a one-off lap time over the three days, so I’m confident we could have made an improvement if we’d needed to but the test was about evaluating the tyres for Bridgestone and I wasn’t taking any unnecessary risks.”
Luigi Dall’Igna (Ducati Corse General Manager)
“For us it was important to show that we could also make progress at Phillip Island, on a track that is so different from Sepang in Malaysia. We also tried to do a race simulation, which is always very useful. I am quite pleased with the results, but in any case we still have a lot of work to do before becoming really competitive.”
