Valentino Rossi says new Ducati much better

A busy second day of testing at Sepang for the Ducati Team focused on preparing the GP12’s base setup. Rossi achieved his goal of lapping under the 2’02 mark.

"It was another positive day, both because we achieved our goal of lapping at 2’01 and because we managed to make further progress with the bike setup. On the other hand, as is normal with a brand-new bike like the GP12, as we progress with our tests we also find other details that can’t be addressed with setup alone and that will therefore have to be perfected in the coming weeks. We identified those areas yesterday—acceleration and electronics—and we confirmed the progress made with the front end. Honda and Yamaha have been working on their bikes for a year, while we’ve just had two days, which makes our job particularly challenging, but we already knew that as well."

"Tomorrow will be important because we’ll be able to make an overall assessment of the three days, and we’ll have a clearer idea of where we stand compared to the others. If we manage to stay under one second from the top, I’ll be happy."