Alstare Ducati riders Carlos Checa and Ayrton Badovini knew that the start of the 2013 World Superbike season would be tough, especially debuting a new machine, but they probably didn’t expect a round like Phillip Island with both of them ending up with injuries, and this past weekend’s second round at Motorland Aragon, Checa bruised himself again during the pre-event go-kart race and during the race he also had the bad luck of being stung by a bee.
Even if Ducati did sent two riders to test the Panigale for three days at Aragon ahead of the race, the team’s results in both races were disappointing.
Checa scored a seventh and eighth place while Badovini rode to two tenth spots.
Race tracks that have very long straights has never gone down well with Ducati’s twins as they have never had the top speed of the four cylinders – at Aragon they were down over 20km/h – but they usually recover some tenths in the twisty part of the circuits, but this time, even on the corners, the Panigale was having issues (it seems to be a common problem even for Ducati in MotoGP).
To try to remedy the situation both Checa and Badovini will be testing at Jerez this weekend.
After the jump you can read what Checa and Badovini had to say following yesterday’s double header.
“I think there has been some improvement on the chassis side, although I still had trouble through the corners – in race one I was struggling to find the apex.
At a certain point I realized I’d been stung by a bee and in the final laps my shoulder started to give me some trouble, so there were definitely a few problems to contend with.
Despite all that I did what I could to keep pace and was able to hold my position in both races.
In the end it wasn’t so bad.
Of course we’re not exactly satisfied with the race results but in these circumstances I don’t think we could have done more here today.
I am satisfied though with the work we’ve done over the weekend.
I’ve given my technicians a lot of feedback and they’ve worked really hard – I know that they are capable of moving us in the right direction.
We’re looking ahead.
We now have two important test days at Jerez and then we go to Assen where we hope to be able to close the gap a little,” said Checa.
Ayrton Badovini said, “Today’s races were not at all easy for us.
In race 1 I did all I could to finish the race and take a few points, without taking any risks.
In the second race I was lapping a lot better, the bike was behaving quite differently compared to the first race and I was able to push.
We made some quite big changes to the bike between the first and second races and they made a difference.
I’d say we’ve made a step forward.
We’re working well and understanding the direction we need to take.
The tests this week in Jerez are very important for me in particular because I still haven’t had a lot of time on the bike so I hope to make the most of those sessions.
Here at Aragon we’ve collected a lot of information that we can hopefully use to our advantage in the coming weeks.
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