Ducati’s Chaz Davies will start both World Superbike races at Donington Park on the fourth row after a quickshifter fault in yesterday’s wet Superpole caused him no end of problems.

Eventually, he had to manually shift through the gears, which proved to be uncomfortable for the Welshman. With conditions looking like they are going to be wet this afternoon at the Leicestershire track the rider is hoping for a good start to make up for a problematic qualifying outing.

“Superpole was a disaster. I tried to go pretty steady at first to get the tyres up to temperature, after a couple of laps the shifter started to get really stiff, and we used the shifter  which is automatic both ways on the gas,” said Davies, speaking to bikesportnews.com.

“Usually you can stay on it and click through the gears, and likewise into the corners the blipper system helps you ease into the gear to help you not use the clutch, and the system for that wasn’t working - whether that was electrical through all the rain, im not sure but it didn’t work and I was manually shifting everywhere and that was pretty uncomfortable, so it was a disaster all in all.”