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Buriram WorldSBK: Lightweight Melandri suffering with stability

WorldSBK championship leader and double race winner in Phillip Island Marco Melandri had a good first day of practice in Thailand but it all went wrong for him in race one's hotter conditions.

Even on Friday his bike was plainly having issues on the straights, weaving and wobblingly alarmingly.

Back then Melandri thought it was also a factor of the circuit itself, despite suffering some hairy moments during his double winning weekend in Australia.

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“The straight is very bumpy – wavy more than bumpy – and in those waves the bike is moving,” said Melandri on Friday. “I do not know why. It is not easy and I did not expect it, but it is much easier than PI. At the movement is controllable.”

On raceday one, however, Melandri’s stability problems became critical and they cost him several places, as he finished eighth.

“We found a good pace yesterday during practice, but today we struggled once again with stability on the straight. I was competitive with fresh tires and I fought in the leading group but, as the laps went by, I was forced to ride a bit more slowly.

"The bike was wobbling a lot and, on a track like this with three long straights, it became an uphill race. Unfortunately we still haven't solved this issue once and for all.”

Melandri’s small stature and lightness mean that his stability problems are worse than his much taller team-mate, Chaz Davies. “Sometimes I get it but I think my weight, or whatever, I can let it fizzle out,” said Davies after race one in Thailand.

“There are pros and cons to being light. Obviously in a straight line, when you pick the thing up and it is stable, Marco’s weight is an advantage. But, from a stability point of view it is clearly not an advantage on our bike at the minute. I could see it a little bit when I was behind Marco and it wasn’t too bad - but I guess it must have got worse.”

Being a complex machine, with a monocoque front chassis section and several innovative design features in its rear suspension, the Panigale has been a notoriously fickle machine. Even in its final year before it is replaced by the new V4, it is still throwing up new challenges for the engineers to try and nail down, even if only for a rider as tiny and as fast as Melandri.

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