MotoGP: Dovi unamused at Ducati progress

While Jorge Lorenzo, without a real benchmark of Ducati’s progress since his defection from Yamaha, might be pleased with the progress being made by the Bologna firm’s engineers, his teammate Andrea Dovizioso came away from Phillip Island decidedly less happy about the 2017-specification machine.

Pleased with the fact that they’re at least closer to the front than last year, he says the new bike nonetheless still doesn’t have what it takes to turn him and Lorenzo from occasional race winners into genuine title contenders.

“It depends in which way you want to see the test, because if you compare it to last year’s then I was more competitive in Malaysia and more competitive here even though it’s one of my worst tracks. I’m happy, with that, happy with the work that the team and I have done, and we’re quite fast.

“But we didn’t do enough to negate the negative points of the bike, and if I look at the championship then I know we haven’t done enough to be competitive at every track. The problem isn’t the speed, but the grip at Phillip Island was less because of the temperatures, and the turning made a big effect. So we can be very strong in very areas, but not in others.”

And with the opening round of the championship only a month and three testing days away, the 2016 race winner also admitted that it’s unlikely that they’re going to see dramatic improvements from the machine this side of the season’s three flyaway opening races.

“It’s difficult to have new material for Qatar – two weeks isn’t enough time to build something. We have to understand what we have to do to try and improving the turning of the bikes that we’ve got now.”