Newly-crowned World Superbike Champion Carlos Checa looks set to test the Desmosedici GP12 MotoGP bike to help the team as both Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden will run out of allocated test days before too much longer.
It looks more likely Checa will put his vastly experienced hand on the GP12 tiller before he gets his hands on the 1199 PanicEarly. The new Superbike, which has been developed by Troy Bayliss, among others, will probably be raced in Britain before anywhere else and Checa will stick to his current Althea bike for 2012.
The factory, and in particular Filippo Preziosi, want next year's MotoGP sorted out and pronto. Rossi has only a handful of his allocated eight test days left. They still don't have a firm direction for the front-end issues even with the much-vaunted FTR-built Deltabox copy.
Checa is significantly faster than both the Ducati test pilots (Franco Battaini and team manager Vito Guareschi) and has lapped some circuits quicker on his Superbike than The Doctor has on his MotoGP bike. Ducati are in 'whatever it takes' mode.
