Ducati’s Chaz Davies found that lack of grip during both World Superbike races at Sepang proved a major issue at the hot track today. The Welshman expected the races to be ‘tough’ and with grip being a problem it affected other parts of his bike, like the electronics.
Starting from eighth on the grid, Davies was quickly able to make up a number of positions and was lapping fourth through the opening stages. He battled with Red Devils Roma’s Toni Elias and got past him on lap six to move up into third position.
In the final laps, a drop in grip prevented Davies from defending his position as he would have wanted and he was passed by Voltcom Suzuki’s Eugene Laverty. The Ducati man then continued to fight it out to the wire with Elias, ultimately crossing the line ahead of the Spaniard to earn a very worthy fourth place finish.
In race two temperatures had further increased, with the track up to 59°C. Race direction soon stopped the race with a red flag after another rider's bike left oil on track. A ‘quick restart’ and the race, shortened to just 10 laps, got underway.
Davies was able to pass Pata Honda’s Leon Haslam early on, and towards mid-race battled with Laverty but losing ground in the closing stages, with a more dramatic drop in grip than in race one. Davies then crossed the finishing line in eighth.
“The races today were about as tough as we’d expected really. The main problem was a lack of side grip but then that also exaggerates other things as a result, for example the electronics are not so smooth when the edge grip is so low,” said Davies.
“The feeling was fairly similar in both races, perhaps a small improvement in race two after we made some changes, but we need to get on top of the side grip problem in order to be able to accelerate better off the turns. I was fairly happy with the race one result. Anyway, I felt that I did all I could here and we’ll continue to work to resolve the grip issues.”
