Ducati confirms carbon fibre swingarm.

Ducati has confirmed to Crash.net that the new swingarm used during the Qatar MotoGP night test, which concluded on Tuesday, is made of carbon fibre.

Ducati's Desmosedici GP9 is already the only MotoGP bike to feature a carbon fibre chassis and the move to a carbon fibre swingarm further separates the Italian machine from its Japanese rivals.

Ducati's five MotoGP riders all claim to have felt a clear improvement in stability from the carbon fibre chassis, but factory riders Casey Stoner and Nicky Hayden avoided being too specific after debuting the new carbon fibre swingarm at Qatar.

"We confirmed the good feeling I had yesterday [Monday] with the new swingarm, although we still need more time to work on it and that's what we'll be doing at Jerez," said Stoner, after finishing the Qatar test fastest of all by almost one second.

"I got a good feel for the new swingarm straight away but we still have work to do and we need to make more comparisons with the previous version before drawing definite conclusions," added Hayden, who was fifth on the end of test timesheet.

The original Desmosedici GP9 swingarm is made of pressed aluminium.

The final pre-season MotoGP test of 2009 takes place on March 28-29 at Jerez.