Aruba.it Ducati’s Chaz Davies is hoping to put the misfortunes of past trips to Misano behind him and reward the ‘humbling’ Italian crowd with two strong results this weekend.
The World Superbike Championship has already made one visit to Italy this season at Imola, where Davies stormed to his first double of the season to reignite his title challenge.
However, a difficult weekend at Donington Park a fortnight later – the result of a crash in race one and contact in the early stages of Sunday’s encounter forcing him into a recovery ride – sees Davies come into the seventh round of the season 75 points adrift of championship leader Jonathan Rea in third.
Misano has not been kind to Davies over the year, the Briton scoring just one rostrum and failing to see the chequered flag on two occasions, but is feeling positive ahead of this weekend’s action.
“I feel good heading into the second Italian round of the year,” said Davies.
“The home fans’ support is always worth a lot: it’s humbling, enjoyable and gives you extra motivation.
“We have yet to score great results at Misano and we need to put it right because we always had the pace there.
“Last year we were particularly strong, but the ball just didn’t bounce our way as we crashed and the were pushed off the track during the races.”
Much of the WorldSBK paddock conducted a two-day test at Misano following the Donington round. Ducati did not bring any major upgrades, instead focusing on smaller changes.
Enjoying a positive test, Davies admits there are still a couple of changes to the bike’s set-up still to be made but nothing massive.
“The testing was good, we just need to put together a few bits and pieces but our window has been defined and we won’t make any radical changes.
“We defined a couple of potential directions to try and that’s where we’ll start from in FP1.”
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