Chaz Davies believes he is finally getting a feeling for his new bike after battling his way to seventh in the second race of the season-opening doubleheader in Australia.
The Knighton-born rider had been disappointed with his 16th place in the opening race of the campaign at Phillip Island on Saturday.
Davies had finished 10th in the new-style 10-lap Superpole race on Sunday morning which has been introduced by Superbikes bosses this season.
And he quickly followed that up with seventh at the track near Melbourne after improvements made bu his Aruba-it Racing Ducati team that made him more comfortable on the Panigale V4 R bike.
The potential of the new bike was demonstrated by rookie team-mate Alvaro Bautista who stormed to a hat-trick of wins to open up a 13 point lead in the standing over reigning four-time champion Jonathan Rea.
Davies said: “We managed to make some progress in race 2 and I felt a bit better with the V4 R, which is the most important thing.
“After Saturday’s result, we had nothing to lose so the guys in the team made some major changes that allowed me to slightly improve my race pace.
“I’m still a bit disappointed because we didn’t expect this result, but we picked up a lot of useful data to understand what I need for the next race. My congratulations to Álvaro, because he was really impressive all throughout the weekend.”
Davies, who has finished runner-up in the championship three times in the past four year, will be looking to continue his progress at the next round in Thailand on March 15-17.
Bautista could not have dreamed of making a perfect start having made the switch to World Superbikes from MotoGP as he dominated the weekend with the victory treble.
The 34-year-old Spaniard said: “It has been a perfect weekend and my Superbike debut couldn’t have been better! We made a clean sweep of everything by winning race 1, the Superpole race and race 2.
“If people had said to me before that I would have won three races, I wouldn’t have believed them, but we worked hard during the tests to prepare a fantastic bike.
“A big thanks to the Aruba team, to Ducati and to my crew for making this all possible! Now we have to continue to work hard, we’re only at the beginning and I think it’s going to be a very top-level championship.”