Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Iannone (Ducati Team) made further progress today on the second day of pre-season IRTA testing at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia, and after just two days on the new bike both men said that they were very satisfied with the progress being made.
After yesterday’s positive track debut of the Desmosedici GP15, today both Dovizioso and Iannone concentrated on the meticulous job of perfecting settings, chassis and suspension geometry, clocking up the miles and doing numerous exits with the GP15 in order to identify the best possible set-up for the Italian manufacturer’s new MotoGP challenger.
Today it was the turn of Iannone to be the quickest Ducati rider: the man from Vasto immediately improved his time set yesterday by almost two seconds, and then right at the very end shaved off another four-tenths to finish Day 2 in an excellent third place overall with a time of 2’00.098 seconds, just two-tenths away from leader Marc Marquez (Honda) and Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha).
Dovizioso also improved his best lap time by more than one second, bringing it down to 2’00.250 in the morning, a time that propelled him into third place in the standings. In his last run of the day, the man from Forlì twice lapped close to his best mark, but in the end had to settle for fourth place, just a tenth away from his team-mate.
Andrea Iannone (Ducati Team #29) – 2’00.098 (3rd), 58 laps
“For sure today was a great day. This morning, when we began to lap, I managed to immediately find a better feeling with the GP15 and I am happy that, day after day, doing more and more kilometres with this bike, I can get more feeling. In addition, we managed to improve the bike’s set-up and we were pretty quick. Rather than the time attack I did in the afternoon, I’m happier with the work we carried out throughout the day, because it allowed me to do my time with the hard tyre. The team is working really well, and the bike is improving day after day. It’s improved a lot in the changes in direction and in its nimbleness, it’s quicker between the corners and these are all positive aspects.”
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 2’00.250 (4th), 58 laps
“Today was again very good: I’m pleased if I compare my lap times with those of the other riders. But in my opinion, we still need to do a lot of work, in the sense that we are quick but I can’t yet ride the way I want, and my feeling with the front is still not perfect. We are working hard and trying numerous different set-ups to try and understand how this bike is, because it’s very different from the GP14. It’s clear that there is a lot of enthusiasm because the bike has improved, but we still need more time to improve our performance.”
Michele Pirro (Ducati Test Team #51) – 2’01.897 (19th), 41 laps
“Today we didn’t go in search of lap times, instead we carried out a work schedule for the reliability of the Desmosedici here at Sepang, which as we can remember from last year’s race, can be a very critical track due to the high temperatures and so we’re trying to identify some solutions that allow us not to have any problems in the future.”
