News

Aruba.it Racing – Ducati riders Chaz Davies and Davide Giugliano have reached the end of a two-day test at Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, both declaring themselves satisfied notwithstanding some adverse weather.

The riders performed the test ahead of Round 8, to be staged on the same track across the weekend of 17-19 June.

Both riders looked into back-to-back comparisons in order to improve base setups, placing emphasis on consistency with used tyres as they look for lap time improvements in the closing stages of races. At the same time, Giugliano sampled riding with a rear thumb break – already used by several riders.

Davies completed 105 laps, while Giugliano circulated a total of 108 times over the course of the two days on the Adriatic coast of Italy; both were forced to cut short race simulations when rain arrived on Wednesday afternoon.

Chaz Davies – 1’35.485:
“After so many races, it seems like a long time since our last test. It’s definitely been positive to have a couple of days to try things and ideas that can’t be tested on a race weekend. It’s a shame that the rain cut our track time short, but we’ve found a couple of good solutions for our base setup that should help us make another step forward, and this is the most important thing.

At this point of the season, everyone is capable of getting up to speed quite quickly, even though these tests were clearly useful also to get better prepared for next race. Last year Misano wasn’t an easy weekend for us, so our goal is to make up for it in a couple of weeks’ time.”

Davide Giugliano – 1’35.510:
“We were able to evaluate a couple of ideas, especially in terms of electronics, which turned out to be quite good. It’s always important to make in-depth tests on the base setup because, during the races, the focus is on pure speed. I believe we took another step in the right direction. I also tried a thumb-activated rear brake with positive feedback, even though I clearly still need to get adjusted to it.

We’ve been progressively faster over the last few races, so our next goal is to have a whole weekend without any drops in our performance. Unfortunately, the rain forced us to close shop early, but these two days have been important and productive ahead of the Misano round.”

The fastest laps from the 2015 races were 1’34.855 (from Giugliano in Race 1) and 1’34.720 (from Kawasaki Racing Team’s Jonathan Rea in Race 2).