- Fifth fastest time for Davide Giugliano and the 1199 Panigale
- The factory squad takes advantage of this final chance to prepare for the coming weekend’s opening championship round
Phillip Island (Australia), Tuesday 18 February 2014 – The Ducati Superbike Team completed two days of official testing at the Phillip Island circuit today, with riders Chaz Davies and Davide Giugliano lining up alongside all of the other Superbike teams for the first time this season.
The Ducati Superbike Team took advantage of the warm and sunny conditions (average air temperature 24°C, track 42°C) during these official testing sessions at the Island, which provided all teams with a final opportunity to test before the first round of the 2014 championship kicks off this coming weekend at the same track.
Yesterday morning, factory riders Davies and Giugliano quickly settled down to work with their technicians, beginning to set up their 1199 Panigale machines for the Australian circuit. The team worked solidly during the day’s two sessions and, by the end of day one, Giugliano had recorded the second fastest overall time (1’30.7), with Davies recording a best of 1’31.4 to close day one in tenth position.
During today’s sessions, the Ducati Superbike men continued to progress in the right direction, further improving lap times and feeling with the bike. Throughout the day, work focused primarily on the testing of new parts brought to this event, including engine and electronic components. Giugliano made a series of laps in under 1’31, setting a best of 1’30.644, recorded towards the end of the morning’s session, which put him in overall fifth position. Davies also improved on yesterday’s times; his best of the day was a 1’31.087, a lap time also recorded in today’s first session and which placed him tenth.
The team will be back at the same Phillip Island track on Friday for the opening sessions of Round 1 of the 2014 World Superbike Championship.
Quotes at the end of testing:
Davide Giugliano – Ducati Superbike Team #34
“I’m really pleased with the results. We’ve been working a lot on the set-up of my bike and on the feeling I have with it and everything we’ve done so far has brought positive results. We’ve been fairly fast in each session and then the long-run that we made in the final session provided us with some useful data. We’ll try to continue working in the same direction, because it’s important to maintain focus and perform over the race weekend, not only during testing of course. Ducati has brought a series of small things to test, which all combined have made a difference and so the bike is improving step by step and this is really encouraging.”
Chaz Davies – Ducati Superbike Team #7
“I feel that we’re working well so far and I’d say that we’re definitely moving in the right direction. During the sessions, we’ve tried a couple of different electronic strategies, and a couple of new engine development parts and everything seems to be fairly positive, so far so good. There are areas in which I still want to improve but we still have time during Friday and Saturday’s sessions of course. Lap times have been very close during these tests so I think we’re in for some exciting racing come Sunday.”
Ernesto Marinelli – Ducati Superbike Project Director
“These two days of testing were very intense even though the track time only amounted to 4 hours each day. Over the winter period, we have completed a lot of work in Bologna and we’ve come to Australia with many things to test both in terms of the engine and the electronics. The results obtained have been positive and both Chaz and Davide have tested all of the development parts. Both riders have shown that they are happy with the base identified over the two days and this is very important ahead of the first race weekend. All of our references from last year with the race tyre have been improved upon here and this reassures us that the direction we are taking is the right one. The gap is relatively small but we must continue to work hard to reduce it.”
