Andrea Dovizioso believes he and Ducati will be MotoGP title contenders “from the beginning” of the season, following a largely positive pre-season.
The Italian stunned in 2017 when he mounted a strong challenge for the championship, taking six wins and forcing his tilt to the final round in Valencia; though ultimately came up second-best to Honda's Marc Marquez.
Dovizioso has shown well throughout testing this year, only missing the top five on two of the eight days of running so far, and finding the new bike to be a marked improvement over its predecessor almost immediately.
After Friday in Qatar – in which he was second having led for a length period during the session – Dovizioso feels Ducati “has done everything perfectly” in testing with the GP18.
“This year we're a title contender from the beginning [of the season],” he said.
“Last year it wasn't like this. We've worked well in the tests until now, normally it's difficult to test everything you need to, but we've done everything perfectly.
“I'm happy with everything Ducati has brought over the winter.”
Dovizioso spent the majority of Friday comparing both versions of the '18 chassis, conducting a race run on the frame introduced in Thailand. Though happy with his pace on it, he admits he is uncertain if he will continue with it come the opening race.
“There are still a few areas where I'm not completely happy, but on this track our bike works really well,” Dovizioso added.
“Our speed is really good and we did the best lap on our long run – well, we did 12 laps, so not a very long run.
“But I was very happy, I was able to keep good pace. In the past our bike worked well on this track, and now it looks even better.
“I'm happy with what we did. We compared the new chassis and there are positives and negatives; we did the long run on the new chassis, and it's not clear what we'll use yet but there's a lot of time left for everyone to work still.”
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