Ducati Corse’s Jorge Lorenzo has said that the Phillip Island test has started off a lot better for him than it did in Malaysia, despite only managing 11th on the time sheets.
The five-times world champion, who makes his Ducati debut in 2017 after nine years as a Yamaha rider, struggled to adapt to the Desmosedici in Sepang the same way he had done in Valenica last November.
Lorenzo’s style of releasing the brakes early and carrying as much corner speed as possible just isn’t suited to the the heavy Desmo, and so the remaining two days in Sepang saw him trying to adapt, which he managed to somewhat do.
The Spaniard began the day with the same set-up he used at the end of the Sepang test, and this put him in the right direction for the rest of the session.
“The tests here at Phillip Island have begun a lot better than in Sepang, and today we used the same base set-up that we had established at the end of the test in Malaysia,” Lorenzo said.
Lorenzo completed 61 laps of the Australian circuit today, but failed to improve his laptimes in the final hours after strong winds and a defective rear tyre hindered his progress. At the end of the session he was 11th quickest on a 1m30.632s.
Though not setting the timing screens alight quite the way he would have hoped, the Spaniard is still happy with his day’s work and is continuing to make strides on his Ducati.
“It was a shame that during the last one and a half hours we were unable to improve our laptimes while other riders did,” he added.
“We struggled to lower our times because of the strong wind, and in addiction the last rear tyre we fitted didn’t have the same sort of performance that we had expected. In any case it’s positive the fact that every day we are accumulating new information and that we are always making small steps forward.”
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