Ducati focus on setup and getting more from harder tyre

Ducati completed almost 250 laps at Misano with Andrea Dovizioso and Andrea Ianonne. While their headline laptimes weren’t as impressive as Honda’s both felt that they had made plenty of progress at the test. Over the course of two days both riders were underneath lap record with Dovizioso setting the faster time with a 1’32.5.

Dovizioso has struggled of late but with the added time of a test, and the lack of race weekend pressure, he was able to focus on various options that the team has been unable to utilise at a race.

“These two days of testing at Misano have been really useful, because we were able to do the set-up testing work that we were interested in,” said Dovizioso. “During race weekends, we never have the right amount of time to devote ourselves to this. We worked on fine-tuning, both the electronics and the set-up, and our pace is not bad at all: my quickest lap I did this morning with a used tyre, but in the afternoon it was really very hot and we didn’t try to improve our times, and even avoided using the soft tyres.”

For Iannone the key was to focus on used tyres and getting the most from the harder compound rubber. With the softer tyre offering an edge in qualifying the team need to get the most from their race rubber if they are to have the chance of winning races.

“In one and a half days of testing, we only used a total of three tyres, all hard compound, and even this morning I never used soft tyres,” said Iannone. “Despite this we improved our pace over yesterday by more than half a second. This is important for us and I am pleased with how we went. I’m just disappointed I had to finish the test early, but unfortunately from this morning onwards my shoulder was hurting really bad and I was unable to lap quickly or push hard. Today however I had some good sensations on the bike, we did a good job and picked up a lot of important information for the future.”