@ MDzane....I realise your post was tongue in cheek, but it made me think.
It must be soul destroying for Nicky to arrive at a test and put in 150+ laps with nothing to test. Correct me if I'm wrong but this is the 3rd test in a row where the only thing he can test is that the foot pegs are in the right place for him.
Dovi has come in knowing that the Ducati is very difficult to acclimatise to. Either Audi have made him some promises, or he thinks he can adapt his style to suit the bike.
Or just maybe he has learnt what he needs from the experts on here.
Whatever, I fancy him to beat Nicky in the very near future.

Its a good job Honda's production RCV and Yamaha's 4 extra engines are not showing up till next year otherwise Ducati would be OUT of the top 10 every single week! I only hope they make make a new bike from scratch in time to avoid such embarrassment.

And all you Stoner fans, don't try and say he did anything,jjjjime.
Winning the only world championship Ducati are ever likely to win in Motogp obviously counts as nothing in your book then mate.
Where do you people come from!

The face of Dovi in the picture is priceless ahahhahahah he's about to cry!

2007 was a new platform which happened to gel perfectly with the Bridgestone tires. Ducati's screamer engine was amazing as well. Casey was out to prove he deserved that factory ride with a fire in his belly. The planets were aligned for him & Ducati. Once we had the control tires, which needed to perform over a wider range of platforms, the Japanese manufacturers, with their greater R&D budgets, made their machines more adapted to the situation. Ducati are a much smaller operation than the other 2 still participating. Until we bring back the tire wars, nothing will change. That's unless Ducati kidnap some Japanese engineers. Still, I wish them the best & hope Audi is willing to give a few years trying before pulling the plug.

Ducati will exit from MotoGP if they don't achieve better results. There is no point in spending millions on a POS bike and fight for 10th place. It is shameful for them to be slower than the satellite Honda and Yamaha.

@Realist .
thats fare enough , personally i agree the dukes won't hold much water this year again.
between 07/10 most people thought the duke was the greatest bike on the grid and the riders had a problem , now its totally the other way around.
there have been 3 totally different versions of the desmo with no apparent differences in performance of each one , it still has the most powerful engine on the grid , the bike is all about engine with bits and pieces joining it to some wheels , so to me i believe the only way to make it win is to use everything in the engine because thats its only weapon , without the correct tyres the bike is lifeless with only the huge powerplant remaining strong , stoner used the engine power to turn the bike with the rear.

@ dacron

The statement about "everybody" wasn't meant to be taken literally. I realize that it was only "some" people on Crash, but at the time, that was a healthy amount of the contributors. Harsh prediction? I don't think it's harsh. I think it's reality. It's no more "harsh" than some of the predictions that were tossed around before the end of last season. The top 4 are cemented, Bradl, Crutchlow and a few others will take the 5-7th or 8th spots. That'll leave a couple for the Ducati boys, and if I were a betting man, I'll give that to Hayden.

Spang test 2011 Rossi finished 3 tenths fron Nicky but He had already rode the bike in the earlier Jerez test, first time on the Ducati Dovi finishes 1 tenth behind Nicky,
I think this proves without a shaddow of a doubt that Dovi is the far better rider.

Or lets just say it's early days yet.

It's the pilot that sucks! yeahhh!! hehehehehe

That went for all the people who blamed Rossi for the Ducati... that bike is crap, plain simple.