Damage limitation for Davies
‘I screwed my tyre but was happy to finish on Jonathan’s tail’
Third and fifth places weren’t what Chaz Davies wanted at Assen, although a 30-point deficit to Jonathan Rea is better than the 84-point gap he faced this time last year.
“A podium on Saturday was good,” the Ducati man said. “I was comfortable following Johnny and there wasn’t much between us, then van der Mark came past. I could see JR was going to make a break, but I thought Michael could get aggressive with him which might have played into my hands. I screwed my tyre with two laps to go, but was happy to finish on Jonathan’s tail.
“On Sunday I got a heavy vibration with about six laps to go. We’re not completely sure why, but Marco (Melandri) had a similar problem during the weekend and once he swapped the tyre it was fine. I was lucky to finish fifth.”
The Achilles’ heel for the Ducati is edge grip. The team will work on that during this week’s Brno test where they have the opportunity to test new chassis components they’ve had since round one, but have so far been unable to evaluate.
“We have to improve. We had the bike nice and stable but it didn’t work as well at Assen, where you need a lot of agility. We reverted to our 2017 set-up, making the bike shorter and more agile. That was much better but we really should have changed it after FP2 and not FP3. Anyway, our performance was acceptable. I’m not thrilled, but it was good damage limitation.”