Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso has admitted at the Sepang MotoGP test he has been surprised by how good the 2018-spec Demsosedici is and is pleased the factory have been able to find solutions to the mid-corner turning issue he has suffered.

The 2017 series runner-up hasn’t figured too highly on the timesheets, setting a 1’59.732 today, but hasn’t tried for a soft-tyre time attack lap and set his best when the track temperature was more than 50°C.

“Really good about my feeling, even better than yesterday, and we did another comparison with the old bike and the new bike,” said Dovizioso, speaking at the track.

“We confirmed some positive things. We understood more about the small details, positive and negative, so I’m really, really happy about that. I did the lap time in the hottest moment, so I’m really happy about that.

“Unfortunately, in the last one hour and a half in our plan there were two new parts to test and make the tyre at the end, because the conditions were really good at the end of the day.

“But we had some problems. I couldn’t start at the right time and we couldn’t test the material and we couldn’t test the tyre. So we lost a bit of time in the afternoon but overall the feeling was really, really good today.

“The entry is really a lot better. The base of the 2017 bike works really well here already. Also with the ’17 I did a good lap time. But I have a better feeling with the ’18 in some parts of the track.

“Like I said yesterday, I’m a little bit surprised and happy to feel that. But we didn’t have a lot of time on the new bike so we don’t know if there is a margin, how much, where the margin is…

“So I hope to find a good condition tomorrow because we need that time to work on the details. This track is always working in the right way then you can understand a lot of things. I hope to work in a good condition.”