New Ducati recruit
Andrea Dovizioso agrees with teammate
Nicky Hayden that 'something big' is required to turn around the flagging fortunes of the Italian marque in the
MotoGP World Championship.
Dovizioso was only 10th fastest on the final day of the three-day test at Sepang in Malaysia, finishing behind Hayden and series rookie Bradley Smith on the satellite Tech 3 Yamaha YZR-M1.
His time of 2m 02.277s on the Desmosedici GP13 left him 2.1s off the pace of Dani Pedrosa.
Dovizioso said: “Yes, it was a difficult test but we didn't expect it to be any different. We're here to improve the situation and everybody knows the level we are now so we have to improve.
“We tested as much stuff as we could, because we're focused on improving the bike.
“The gap to the others is big, and we pushed a lot to understand the bike. I gave a lot of feedback, maybe too much!
"We don't know how the next test in Sepang will be,” he added.
“There's too short a time between now and then, so it's difficult to do something big in this time.
“We still have to decide which parts we can bring to the second test. Unfortunately, we need time to try something big.”
Ducati's
MotoGP project director, Paolo Ciabatti, conceded that it 'wasn't nice' to be so far behind the leaders and has pledged to fight to restore Ducati to the top of the pile.
“Obviously, we're not satisfied. We knew we were starting from a base that needed significant development work, but it's not nice to realise we're still so far from the leaders,” he said.
“Still, our engineers gathered important data, and now the only thing to do is to roll up our sleeves and continue the development program in the factory.
“The goal is clear: bring Ducati back to the top of the results sheet as soon as possible.”