Rinaldi ‘upset about the weekend, missing grip on corner exit’

Round four of the WorldSBK championship at Donington Park was certainly one to forget for Michael Rinaldi who was not alone in struggling for Ducati. 

After the highs of his home round in Misano where he claimed two wins and a second, Rinaldi finished close to a minute down on race one winner Toprak Razgatlioglu, while team-mate Scott Redding crashed out on lap three.

Rinaldi's fortunes were slightly improved on Sunday, however, a tenth and eighth place finish has left the Italian ‘upset about the weekend’. 

"Yeah, I'm a little bit upset about the weekend because I have two strange races - yesterday and today (morning), because the weather was really strange," added Rinaldi. 

"The asphalt was half wet, half dry, and I’m not that good in that condition. Today we had the first race like normal condition. 

"I’m not really happy about the result, but this race bring us a lot of data. I understood many, many things during the race and I hope we can find the way to resolve our problem. 

"It is clear from our data that we are missing some grip on the exit of the corner. If we can resolve that I believe we can fight for the podium."  

With Ducati’s working window seemingly smaller compared to that of the Kawasaki and Yamaha, it makes performances and therefore results like this from Rinaldi puzzling to say the least. 

But with the sketchy conditions of race one and the Superpole race perhaps contributing to this, Rinaldi attributed the performance down to being ‘maybe too careful’. 

"In Race 1 and in the Superpole Race the tarmac was humid and I have been maybe too "careful" losing, as a consequence many positions."