Danilo Petrucci just missed out on the top ten by 0.017 of a second on day three at Sepang. The Pramac rider was impressed by the time Jorge Lorenzo set and perhaps regretted working mainly on the 2017 version of the Ducati.

“Jorge set a great time, I didn't think such a time was possible. i would have liked to match it (he smiles), perhaps he wasn't particularly fast on the long run, perhaps he had a problem, but he must be a contender for the title”.

Petrucci then comments on the Majorcan's growth.

“He can now ride the Ducati like the Yamaha, though I've never ridden that bike myself. It all seems to come more easily to him with the GP18, despite there not being any really big differences between the new bike and the GP17”.

Petrucci then looks more closely at the differences.

“The GP18 is definitely more competitive than the last one. I've seen that Jorge has increased his speed through the turns, riding as he did on the Yamaha. It seems that the Ducati turns better, also with the 2018 you try and push, use the speed and set a time. I don't think the differences are that big though, perhaps a different method was needed with the old bike”.

The Pramac rider then analyses his own performance over these three days.

“I'm not very pleased, because I couldn't work so much with the GP18. Part of yesterday was taken up collecting data for Ducati. Today we had a little problem as we were about to use the soft tyre, and then the temperature went up”.

So there is a touch of regret.

“I wanted to get to know the new bike and get close to Lorenzo's time. unfortunately I had to focus on the medium tyre and hope to better exploit our potential in Thailand”.