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Donington WorldSBK: Davies confident V4 not hampering 2018

Changes to the set-up and the tyre options on Chaz Davies’ factory Ducati for WorldSBK race two at his home round allowed him to recover from a bad opening encounter, despite being edged out in the first couple of corners of race two.

And the Welshman doesn’t believe the development of next year’s V4 racebike is slowing down upgrades to the current V-twin Panigale.

“Definitely a big improvement on yesterday and got to P5. I felt like I rode a good race,” said Davies. “I did everything to try and close down the front group and did to some extent. We changed a fair bit make the bike a bit more calm and I changed the rear tyre and I think both helped bring the bike back to me a little bit. But obviously, not enough, nothing amazing.”

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He may have had an even better result but for being pushed wide on the first lap.

“Somebody showed me quite a late wheel and was in deep in the first corners,” explained Davies. “So I sat it up, as I was on the outside. Then I was really far outside and as I gassed it up on the kerb it sort of started to lift the front wheel and I was heading off the track. So, I did not have a good run through Craner and I was already really buried in the pack. It obviously made things a lot more difficult than ideal.”

With a new V-four being worked on now for 2019, there is a temptation to see the recent fall off in the overall performance of the overall Ducati effort as a loss of resources to a hopefully brighter future. Not so, said Davies.

“I think the thing is we will still trickle,” he said. “I don’t feel like anybody is backing off on the twin. The natural think people think after a difficult weekend is that maybe the development has stopped or whatever, but our package is more competitive than we are showing. I think anyway, but it is for sure not easy, not an easy package and not easy to get the best of it.

“But the potential is higher than what we have achieved for the last few weekends, really. We are just not finding a way to put the bike where it needs to be at the minute. The vee four development, I think that is not really going to change things too much.

“It is not like we have massive development during the season anyway. The package is your package is the package and it has been that way since I have been in this team. There is a bit at the beginning but then it stabilises through the year. With set-up sometimes you have to move things around quite a bit.”

Davies, in eighth and fifth places at Donington, slid 64 points behind Jonathan Rea, even when the championship leader had his own ‘worst’ weekend since the bizarre first round of the season. That is a perfect summation of how things went for Davies and Ducati at Donington this time around.

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