Image: Supplied.

Chaz Davies admits he’s still not quite there with the set-up of the all-new Ducati Panigale V4 R following this week’s final pre-season FIM Motul Superbike World Championship test at Phillip Island.

Heading into the weekend’s season-opener, the Aruba.it Racing – Ducati rider has remained unsettled on the direction he wants to pursue, sampling a number components before returning to his initial configuration.

Gathering all the data, the British talent, who was 14th on the timesheets, is banking on making gains in tomorrow’s practice sessions in hope of setting himself up for a strong start to the world championship.

“We’re not quite there yet to be honest,” Davies admitted. “We made some strides this morning and I was quite happy with that. In the afternoon we wanted to change a few things but we ended up going back to this morning’s setting because everything we tried didn’t give me the right feeling.

“We have to put all the data together in the next two days and hopefully on Friday we’ll turn up with a better setting. The good news is that last year we also had a difficult test, but then I raced a lot better than I did at the tests. We’ll take the weekend as it comes and prepare for the race in the best possible way.”

Davies teammate, WorldSBK newcomer Alvaro Bautista, topped the times on both days of testing, concluding Tuesday’s outing 0.236s ahead of the field.