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Perhaps the Ducati Aruba riders expected more from race 1 at Sepang. After Chaz Davies' stunning double win at Imola, the attention of the team (and its rivals) was all on him, but, after practices conditioned by continuous climate changes, causing changes to the Malaysian track, the Welshman has struggled a little though has nevertheless reached the podium, third, albeit far behind winner Tom Sykes with the Kawasaki.
Davide Giugliano closed in sixth place, never in the mix for the podium and over 19 seconds from the front, a significant gap equating to more than one second a lap.
Davies tried to fight Rea for second, but had to settle for final third place, citing some small problems: “I struggled to get the bike turning from mid corner, and I lost a few tenths here and there; it was a really hard race."
The Welshman, who generally has his Panigale under control, suffered more than usual today.
“I didn’t have the usual feeling on the bike, and I couldn’t get as close to the limit as I would have liked to. I'd say we’re still at 95% of our potential but it wasn't enough to win, or come second."
Sykes was almost immediately out of sight, but even Rea appeared unreachable…
"The practices, with all the changes in conditions, were difficult but then we improved, also today, but it wasn't enough. Sykes ran away with it... I was expecting him to slow down eventually, but he didn’t. I was hoping to at least be able to make a move on Rea, but honestly we couldn’t have done more today. Now we’ll sit down with the team to come up with a plan to improve tomorrow.”
Davide Giugliano, cited, also cited some small issues, stating: “We opted for a soft rear tyre during the race, which theoretically could have been a risky choice, but actually gave us some quite good feedback. Instead, we struggled with the front, which dropped more than we expected. This hindered us both in braking and cornering".
Despite the issue, Davide is already looking ahead to tomorrow…
"I was definitely able to ride better today than at any time during practice. This means we’re heading in the right direction. We still have our work cut out for us, but we found a good basis to make more progress tomorrow.”
Supporting the two riders, Superbike Project Director Ernesto Marinelli echoes their comments: “It was undoubtedly a difficult race for us. The track conditions changed throughout the practice sessions, and so did the weather, making it more difficult to set up the bikes. During the race, we were able to collect some important data that was not available to us earlier on during the weekend, and we’ll try to make the most of it to score better results tomorrow."
