The second day of IRTA testing at Sepang was once again characterized by excellent weather conditions that allowed the two Ducati Team riders to make the most of the time available during the day. Both Andrea Dovizioso and Cal Crutchlow were able to continue important development work with their Desmosedici GP14 bikes.
Dovizioso began the second day well, immediately recording – on his eighth lap of the morning – a best time of 2m00.787s, a result that took him up to third in the provisional standings. In the afternoon he was not able to improve his time, but in any case he was satisfied with a fifth place overall in the combined two-day standings.
Crutchlow on the other hand is continuing his learning phase with the GP14, and even though he has not yet managed to find the right feeling with the bike, in the afternoon he improved by almost half-a-second to finish the day seventh overall.
Once again solid support was provided by Ducati’s official test-rider Michele Pirro to the development programme on the Test Team’s Desmosedici GP14.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 5th (2m00.787s)
“Today was again positive, the track is not as quick as the Sepang 1 tests so the times are a reference only to a certain point, but it’s always important to make comparisons with the others. We can say that we closed the gap to the front-runners and I am very pleased with the improvement over these two days. We’re refining the set-up of the bike, at this moment there isn’t much new material to try but we’ve managed to find something interesting. I really didn’t expect that and it’s a positive thing to experience this sensation. Today we also tried out the ECU with the Open software, there are a few different controls with it and it obviously doesn’t work as well as our Factory software, but tomorrow we’ll do some more tests.”
Cal Crutchlow (Ducati Team #35) – 7th (2m00.952s)
“We made some progress this afternoon as well, we were on similar settings to yesterday. I never felt comfortable until lunchtime really, then we started to make some changes to the bike and it felt a lot better at the end of the day. Things are coming better, again me and Dovi have gone quicker, me quicker than at the last test, even though the track conditions are not so good. We’re making progress, but we’ve still got a lot to do.”
