Cautious approach by Zanetti in Phillip Island testing

The Pata Racing team has been getting down to business in the recent private tests at Phillip Island, giving the Italian youngster Lorenzo Zanetti the chance to put in his first miles of 2012. The team were able to obtain a good base set-up for Zanetti who returns to a twin-cylinder mount for the first time since his time in Superstock 1000 in 2010 on a Ducati 1098.

Ending the first day with a time of 1'37.1, the team then worked on the electronics to give Zanetti the chance of getting his time down to 1'35.2 on day 2, with a further improvement marked down on the third day as he reached a benchmark of 1'34.7. Testing for Zanetti in his rookie SBK year will continue on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

"We left Italy in sub-zero temperatures and came here and it was high summer," said Zanetti. "Once we got down to work it was clear that the test was important to get rid of some of the ‘rust' accumulated over the winter and above all get used to the Superbike-spec Ducati 1098R. We did a lot of laps and by gradually improving the set-up we made progress without taking any risks. There's a lot of work to do and I'm still not 100% familiar with the bike but the feeling is positive and I'm looking forward to the future with optimism. We've now got a few days break and then two more of testing in which we can look to set an even better time. I'm happy with the work we've all done so far, from Monday onwards however the battle will be out on the track. I don't want to make any mistakes but I certainly won't be backing away from the challenge."