The 2017 WorldSBK Championship resumed action at Misano Adriatico (Italy) for the seventh round of the season and second “home race” for the Aruba.it Racing – Ducati team after Imola. Building on the data collected during a two-day test on the Italian track earlier this month, Marco Melandri and Chaz Davies closed Friday’s free-practice sessions in third and fourth position respectively.
Melandri and Davies finished FP1 with the third and fourth-best time then constantly fought among the frontrunners but weren’t able to improve their lap times in hotter conditions during FP2. The duo thus closed the day respectively 0.250 and 0.349 seconds behind the provisional best time, both gaining direct access to Superpole.
The Aruba.it Racing – Ducati team will be back on track tomorrow at 08:45 (CET) for the third and final free-practice session ahead of Superpole and Race 1, which is scheduled to start at 13:00.
Marco Melandri (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati #33) – 1:35.151 (3rd)
“I feel confident. It’s always a plus to finish day 1 within the top three, especially when it’s your home race. The team did a really great job after our last test here, analyzing the data and coming up with a setup that turned out to work quite well. After two difficult rounds, it seems we finally managed to put some issues behind. Now we’ll try to make further improvements, particularly in the first sector of the track, but I want to focus first and foremost on our race pace because, in these conditions, consistency will be crucial. I believe that, if we manage to exploit our potential, we can ride a solid race from start to finish.”
Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati #7) – 1:35.250 (4th)
“Today has been a bit more difficult than what we expected. I still don’t feel totally at ease on the bike, we need to work on the setup. In the test done here a couple of weeks ago we were a bit more competitive, but weather conditions were different today, hotter and more humid, and we struggled a bit more to make good lap times. In particular, I don’t have enough confidence with the front, and we’re on the limit with grip. We also need to tweak a few things with the electronics. We analysed the data in depth, we’re working to improve and I’m confident we’ll be able to better express our potential tomorrow.”
