Australian MotoGP: Chaz Davies looks for points finish in Phillip Island

Britain’s Chaz Davies is confident he can fight with some of MotoGP racing’s hottest talents in tomorrow’s Phillip Island MotoGP after he ended today’s qualifying session in 17th position.

Davies was just 0.215s slower than home favourite Chris Vermeulen and will start tomorrow’s 27-lap race just three places behind John Hopkins and five behind 2006 Australian MotoGP winner Marco Melandri.

The British rider is hoping a set-up breakthrough found at the end of qualifying will help him solve severe stability issues with his Ducati GP7 on the fast and bumpy sections at Phillip Island.

“I’ve been battling quite a lot with stability on the gas. I hit a bump or a series of bumps in the fast sections and it just seems to set the bike off.

“It moves and gets really out of shape front and rear. It’s really difficult to control and I’m on the rear brake quite a bit trying to pull the bike down but it wasn’t making a big difference.

“It’s sliding and then snapping and getting really aggressive tank slapping on me. It’s particularly bad through the fast kinks between Siberia and Lukey Heights and also in Turn 11 and 12,” he told MCN.

Chaz Davies said a rear shock modification in the final stages of qualifying should drastically improve his set-up for tomorrow’s clash, which is only his second MotoGP race for the D’Antin Ducati squad.

He admitted part of his problem today was also gauging how far to push with the extra grip from Bridgestone’s qualifying rubber and Davies added: “The first qualifier wasn’t bad but for the second one we wound everything off a bit on the rear shock.

“We took a load of clicks of compression off and a load of clicks of rebound off to try and slow the bike down a lot and it seemed to work. It got a lot more stable over the bumps. It seemed a lot more stable to ride.

“I didn’t make the most of the lap as it was only my second time on qualifiers. There was a good three-quarters-of-a-second in it.

“It is so difficult convincing yourself how much grip the tyres have got. But they are awesome. I’m not so pleased with the position but at least we found a direction for tomorrow and I think it will help us a lot. I’m fairly confident it will.

“The guys have looked at the telemetry and everything looks a lot better.  I’m fairly confident it should give me a second on races tyres if we can get it sorted.”