Dovizioso: We need something more

Andrea Dovizioso used Monday’s first day of MotoGP testing at Jerez to confirm a “step” with Ducati’s new chassis, but insisted there is still much work ahead to ensure it can compete with the turning abilities of rival manufacturers.

The Italian posted the tenth fastest time of the day, 1.3s off pace setter Maverick Viñales. Impressions with the first version of the GP20 were positive, he said. But a period of analysing the results must follow.

“We were able to make some tests,” said Dovizioso. “We couldn’t try everything we wanted but we compared the chassis again and it was very important in this kind of track.

“The feeling is good but there are positive and negative things. The improvement is still not as big as we want but it’s quite normal because difference of chassis is quite big.

“I think we have to study, analyse more the feedback from this chassis and make another step for the future. Happy about the improvement but not that big.

“It’s a step forward because there wasn’t any negative points and this is good. But not that big. But we have to understand as much as we can because sometimes the improvement is very small but if you understand why you can have a margin to make a bigger step.

“The important thing is to understand. It’s not that easy to do that. We have to be focussed on that.

“We would like to improve a bit more in the middle of the corners. But we did a step so this is positive. It will be very important to understand why we did a step to make another. That is the point. It was very interesting what we did with this chassis. But we need something more for sure.

“We couldn’t test everything today but it’s nothing bad. The important thing was the chassis. We already compared. If we have some more time tomorrow we’ll be focussed on some other parts than the chassis.”