With a few days to go before the World Superbike 2017 season opener, the Aruba.it Racing - Ducati team took it to the track once again in Phillip Island (Australia) for the traditional, two-day test together with all the other teams and riders.

The erratic weather, characterised by frequent showers, strong winds and temperatures around 15 degrees, did not help Marco Melandri and Chaz Davies to go through their programs, as the riders were able to clock 37 and 21 laps respectively, closing in third and eighth position. The team will continue testing tomorrow, with a more promising weather forecast, for the second and final session ahead of the first official practice scheduled for Friday.


Marco Melandri (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati #33) – 1:32.216 (3rd)

“It’s been quite tricky today, as weather conditions kept changing quickly. In particular, the wind was really strong and kept blowing from different directions, so it wasn’t easy to find the right feeling on the bike. The times are destined to drop quite significantly, so they’re not particularly indicative. At any rate, we found a couple of interesting solutions for the future, and we’ll start from there tomorrow.”

Chaz Davies (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati #7) – 1’32.723 (8th)

“We didn’t really get a chance to get going today. Every time we went out on track, we could only do runs of 2-3 laps before the rain started to fall again. In the last 20 minutes we were trying to make a setup change but it took a bit longer than expected and, with the red flags, we didn’t get a chance to improve our position. That said, we know that our package is solid, and considering the lack of track time we can be satisfied with our performance.”