Ducati's Valentino Rossi is looking for race-by-race improvements in the Desmosedici GP12 MotoGP bike he unveiled at the factory yesterday and seems confident he will be able to challenge for podiums in the upcoming season which starts in Qatar at Easter.
The nine-time world champion had a disastrous 2011 with the team swapping from a carbon, stressed-member chassis to a more conventional twin-spar arrangement towards the end of the season before finally moving the engine up and away from the front wheel with the GP12 to give more front geometry adjustment.
"Our first test of the year was excellent because the feeling I had with the bike was positive and at the end we were very happy because we achieved what we meant to do. Maybe we had some little problems when leaving the curve. Then in the second test we tried to solve the problem, but actually we weren't able to do this so it wasn't as good as the first one and we lost some in terms of final position" said The Doctor.
"We know it will take a little time to adjust all this but we have plenty of new things to test in the season so what counts is improvement. We tried doing this last year but it was very difficult but this year we will be improving race by race. This bike is much more tactile and with this configuration it is easier to work on it, it takes less time to make changes. The practices are 45 minutes now so it gives us more time for fine tuning."
