The Ducati Marlboro Team looks forward to the challenges that await when the MotoGP World Championship reaches Sachsenring in Germany this weekend.

It’s a particular track in some ways, but one that’s popular with Valentino Rossi, who has won there five times in his career. Along with this team, he’ll continue to work on settings for the GP11.1, which debuted two races ago.

“At Mugello we started working with the setup in a direction that we had never tried before,” Rossi explained. “We used it Sunday in the warm-up, so we weren’t able to spend much time on it.

“The bike worked better in the race than it had in practice, but we still need to do more experiments with these settings, so at the Sachsenring we’ll see if they might be a good starting point.

“The track is tricky in some spots, but it’s a circuit that I like. We hope the weather and temperature will be good because we need to work on the setup as much as possible before the race.”

Nicky Hayden, who tends to like counterclockwise tracks, is also fond of the German circuit, where he has climbed the podium on four occasions.

“Sachsenring is a tight, scrappy little track, but it’s one I quite like,” Hayden said. “It’s got the shortest lap time the whole year apart from Laguna, but it’s a long race, and we’re on the left side of the tyre for much of the time.

“There are a lot of big left-handers, which I always enjoy, and I’ve had some good results there. The thing that sticks out for me is that it’s almost two parts: the first bit is really tight and slow, and then the last bit is really fast and open.

“Especially with what they call the Waterfall corner, which is fifth-gear, downhill and blind. That’s about as good as it gets, and I’m not sure there’s a better corner on the entire calendar.”

Team manager Vittoriano Guareschi is looking forward to carrying on development of the GP11.1 during the weekend.

“The Sachsenring is very different from Mugello, and it will be interesting to learn whether the latest changes to the setup that we tried on the GP11.1 during the Italian GP will be a good starting point,” he said.

“We’ll see if those settings can also adapt to features like those of the German track, which is narrow and winding. Vale has won there on many occasions, and last year he rode well on his return from injury.”