Dovizioso optimistic as test concludes

Andrea Dovizioso declared himself happy with the progress of the Ducati Desmosedici GP13 after three days of testing at Sepang.

The Italian rider was eighth fastest on the final day, 1.088s behind the fastest lap set by Dani Pedrosa on the Repsol Honda.

Dovizioso and team-mate Nicky Hayden had the chance to experiment with a GP13 featuring a different centre of gravity and weight distribution, with both riders giving mostly positive feedback on the changes in the main.

The alterations had already been tested by Ducati's development team at Jerez prior to the Sepang shakedown.

Dovizioso, whose best lap of 2m 01.650s on Thursday put him one place ahead of Hayden in the times, said: "I'm quite happy with the work we've done here.

"Yesterday we tried some rather radical changes to the setup and were able to understand something about the way for the future, while also improving my feeling.

"I'm now able to brake harder and enter corners faster, although we're still not quick enough in the middle of the corner," he added.

"My lap time is isn't bad for the conditions we had today. [Michele] Pirro's 'laboratory' bike had some positive points, but I couldn't improve my lap time with it because the positioning and the power delivery were different than on my bike.

"Anyway, we needed to understand better whether that bike is good or not, and it was positive, as it helps me with the final part of braking and the first part of corner entry."

Dovizioso was upbeat overall and is now looking ahead to what he anticipates as being an 'interesting' test at Jerez before he opening world championship round in Qatar on April 7.

"I'm very happy with how we worked at this test, with how much we were able to improve from the last test, and with how much feedback we were able to give the engineers," he said.

"It will be interesting to go to Jerez for the last test and to Qatar for the first race because they're all three completely different tracks, so we'll be able understand more."