Source: Ducati Corse.

Ducati concluded the Sepang 2 MotoGP tests in Malaysia satisfied with the Desmosedici’s GP15 debut, as both Andrea Iannone and Andrea Dovizioso made strong progress across the three days.

The GP15 turned a wheel in anger for the first time on Monday morning and immediately proved to be a fast, nimble and above all reliable machine, allowing the two riders to improve their feeling lap consistently and work methodically to follow the scheduled work load throughout the three days.

At the end of the tests, the quickest of the two Ducati riders was Iannone, one of seven men who managed to get under the two-minute mark during the morning session on Wednesday.

After fitting a soft tyre for the first time, Iannone lapped in 1m59.722s in this morning’s time attack, which he then almost repeated in the afternoon when he lapped in a time of 1m59.921s on a hard tyre.

“For sure these were three positive days, because we arrived in Malaysia with a totally new bike without ever having tried it before and we succeeded in lapping pretty quickly and without any reliability problems,” Iannone said.

“The GP15 took to the track for the first time on Monday and so I’m happy with the way it’s improved in such a short period of time. Today we focused on testing various types of setting on the bike, trying to improve the feeling but above all the grip and corner turn-in. There’s still a lot of work to do, but I’m happy with this first contact with the new bike.”

Right behind the leaders was Dovizioso, who lapped in a time of 2m00.468s on his only exit with the soft tyre. He was however unable to improve on the time he set on Tuesday (2m00.250s) on a hard tyre and finished ninth overall in the combined standings over the three days.

Dovizioso said he was really satisfied with the outcome of the tests with the new GP15, but also admitted that something was still missing in the braking area and the feeling with the front in order to be completely satisfied.

“I can but only be happy with these tests. We brought a completely new bike here and we were fast and competitive right from the start,” Dovizioso added. “I am particularly satisfied because we improved the key point from the previous bikes and now the bike ‘turns’ in the corners.

“Back home the guys in Ducati Corse have done a great job and we didn’t have any particular reliability issues in these three days. Now we have to get to know the GP15 better, because we still have a few limits. The new bike is very different from the previous one and so we have to try some extreme set-ups to understand it better, for example in the last part of braking and in the middle of the corner.

“But this is all normal, when you change a bike so much there are always good and bad points. I’m convinced that we have a lot of room for improvement, but we need time and in the next few days our engineers will have a lot of data to analyse before we go to Qatar for the tests in mid-March”.

Ducati Corse general manager Luigi Dall’Igna is positive that any kinks in the GP15 will be ironed out in time for Qatar’s season-opening round next month.

“I am also pretty satisfied with the way things have gone and it seems that everything is going well,” said Dall’Igna. “We lapped for three days without any major reliability issues and this is surely important for a completely new bike.

“The GP15 turns better than the previous model and this was the main aim that we had set for ourselves. We did however find some critical points, especially in braking and we also have a few more issues that will have to be resolved.

“However, I am pleased with the feeling that Iannone has already reached, both from the comments he made and the pace he showed on this track, while Dovizioso on the other hand had a few more problems in the final part of braking, which obviously we have to tackle and resolve. Overall however I am happy, because we have begun our work on the GP15 in a positive way.”