Carlos Checa and Loris Capirossi again concentrated on tyre testing and race set-up at Phillip Island. The Ducati Marlboro Team back testing in Qatar from Tuesday March 1 onwards.

Phillip Island, 19 February 2005 - The Ducati Marlboro Team successfully concluded its Australian testing programme today at the Phillip Island circuit. In cloudy but mild conditions (22° air/29° track), Ducati engineers and riders continued development work on the Desmosedici GP5 with the new Bridgestone tyres.
A few drops of rain fell at around midday, forcing the team to take a break, but the day's testing schedule was unaffected.

Development work with the latest Bridgestone tyres is continuing and Carlos Checa and Loris Capirossi were able to use the Australian track for numerous tests with rear tyres, some new and others used previously, but all the while keeping the same set-up to concentrate exclusively on the different tyre reactions.

Spanish rider Carlos Checa was in particularly good form today, ending the test with a best time of 1m29.86s over 88 laps. Satisfied with the three-day testing session in Australia, Carlos tried to put in the maximum number of laps on the most promising rear tyres.

"I am really happy with this testing session, with my team and with my bike" declared Carlos. "We found a good base set-up for the Desmosedici and some very interesting indications on which to work in the future. Now it's time for a short break and then we'll be back to work in Qatar".

Today Loris Capirossi focussed on suspension set-up but also on mapping work for the powerful Desmosedici engine and at the end of the day was pleased with the bike's better 'driveability'. Loris ended the Phillip Island session with a quickest time of 1m30.18s after completing 59 laps.

"I'm generally pretty pleased with my pace, which was quite good for several successive laps at around 1m30s" said Capirossi. "We still have to do a bit more work over the longer distance, but I and my team are ready!".

Satisfaction about the Australian tests was also expressed by Ducati Marlboro Team technical director Corrado Cecchinelli, who commented: "Even though we lost a bit of time today due to a few drops of rain, we are very pleased with the way the test went: we did many consecutive laps in race set-up and gained a lot of information on how to evolve both the suspension set-up of the bike and the rear tyres. Even though we know that the weather conditions for the race will be a bit different, we gathered a lot of information which will be useful next October."