Three aero fairings a charm for Ducati?

Both riders try out some novelties on Day 1 in Thailand, with Dovi P4 and Lorenzo completing the top ten on Friday

Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) ended the first day of track action in Thailand in fourth, incredibly close to the top and incredibly close to reigning Champion Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda team) ahead of him. But the bigger headline was the Borgo Panigale’s new aero on show – with three fairings tested by ‘DesmoDovi’ on Day 1.

“We spent the afternoon working on the fairing, it’s a new part we have to confirm in Qatar,” says Dovivizioso. “We’ve tested it and tomorrow we’ll test it again. I tried three specs, and like many times there are positives and negatives so we have to be very smart to understand which is the best to use during the season.”

And overall, although the Ducati rider says laptime isn’t important on Day 1, Dovizioso is pretty positive about his first taste of Buriram.

“It’s quite strange because there are three slow corners and the others you have to take with a lot of angle,” explains the Italian. “And part of the track is quite small, but it’s nice to try new things. I’ve felt good from the beginning. It takes some time to understand the brakings point but the speed is good. The laptime isn’t so important today!” In conclusion? Positivity: “I think it’s a good track for us. Not too far from Austria!”

Teammate Jorge Lorenzo was also quite positive about the track, but says it was quite a tough first day.

“It’s a nice track. It’s been difficult for me to understand the limit of the track but little by little I was getting closer to the fastest one,” says Lorenzo. “Today we had a lot of problems with adjustments that didn’t let us be competitive so I think we have a big margin to improve if we can solve all these little adjustments.” And on the aero fairings? The Majorcan also says it’s a case of testing it again on Saturday.

Day 2 begins from 9:30am local time (GMT +7).