Davies: We’ll have to revisit the drawing board for tomorrow

Aruba.it Ducati’s Chaz Davies says his team will have to ‘revisit the drawing board’ following a difficult opening race in Thailand.

The Welshman finished second for the third race in succession in 2017, but was more than six seconds adrift of winner Jonathan Rea, which was not what Davies had anticipated.

The Ducati rider got stuck behind Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes in the early laps, and his pace at the start of the race wasn’t good enough to clear him quickly. By the time he broke free, Ducati team-mate Marco Melandri was 1.5s up the road.

“This morning I sort of thought we’d be closer than that, but in the end our pace just wasn’t good enough, especially at the beginning of the race,” he said.

“I just can’t push the bike to the level of the guys in front of me.

“Not only that, I got shuffled a little bit behind and I struggled to pass. There were a couple of reasons that kept me out of the fight early. In the end, the pace wasn’t good enough in the early laps.”

As the 20-lap contest wore on, Davies’ pace began to improve and he was able to move ahead of Melandri with seven laps to go.

Though happy enough to finish on the podium, he admits that it was still a struggle to chase down the sister Aruba bike, especially through the first two sectors of the Chang International Circuit.

“Looking at the big picture, (I’m) pleased. (But) I want to win,” he continued.

“In the late laps, it was good enough to recover to get second but not without a struggle. It wasn’t really a fantastic feeling out there. I felt like I was losing in the first section of the track and the second section, which was a little bit of a surprise.

“We’ll have to see what went wrong and revisit the drawing board for tomorrow.”

Incidentally, Melandri took the chequered flag in fourth after Sykes put on a late charge to sneak ahead at the final turn. As per the new race two grid rules, the Ducati rider will start from pole on Sunday. Davies will launch away from eighth.