Two weeks after the WorldSBK season finale in Qatar, the Aruba.it Racing - Ducati team took it to the track once again in Aragon for two-days of testing. Marco Melandri joined his new teammate Chaz Davies in the pits as the pair worked on their 2016 machines in preparation for the arrival of their new bikes in January. 

Both riders were able to make several comparisons and evaluated engine, chassis and electronics upgrades developed for the Panigale R. Melandri, finalised work on ergonomics and riding position with 118 laps, which he began defining a month ago in Valencia with the test team. 

“It has been an emotional experience to step on the bike with the team colors and make my debut with the new crew,” said Marco Melandri. “These past two days turned out to be challenging and productive. I quickly found the feeling on the bike, and overall we’re not far from the front, especially in terms of pace. We still have room for improvement, which is normal at this stage, but we know what areas we must focus on. We struggled a bit under braking, despite having made huge progress on day two. That said, I’m really pleased with the bike overall, both in terms of engine and chassis, and I’m also getting closer to an optimal shape physically. In the next tests, we’ll try to define a few more upgrades, but we can start working on the details now.”

Davies clocked 106 laps, over the two days in Spain, working mainly on the front end and aerodynamics.

“Going into this test, we had a good list of parts to try for 2017,” explained Davies. “We got some good confirmation about the new front fork, and we also tried a different fuel tank to optimize aerodynamics, as well as some electronic upgrades. Of course, it’s still early and we have just started to work on the new package, but I’m quite confident we’re going in a good direction. I didn’t lap with my preferred setup and I only used a soft tyre at the very end of the last session, so the lap times could have been better probably, but that wasn’t our priority. Now we’ll go to Jerez which a very different track, to make some more evaluations and further benchmark our potential.” 

The Aruba.it Racing - Ducati team now head to Jerez from November 23rd until the 25th for further tests before they break for Christmas.