Just under three weeks since the conclusion of the 2018 Motul FIM Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK), Aruba.it Racing – Ducati’s Chaz Davies has experienced his first taste of the all-new and race-prepared Panigale V4 R.

Davies completed one of two days of private testing at Aragon in Spain, where he focused acquainting himself with the new bike, along with fine-tuning the ergonomics according to his needs and gathering plenty of useful data for the development process.

Undertaking 61 laps, the British ace declared he felt immediately comfortable aboard the all-new machine, while making a number of steps forward in just the early stages of development.

“It was really exciting to take the Panigale V4 R out on track for the first time,” Davies explained. “It felt like christmas, when you get a wonderful new toy to play with. Usually it takes me a bit of time to learn and understand a new bike, but honestly it felt the opposite today.

“I was really comfortable straight away, after the first out lap I felt like I wanted to push immediately, which is pretty cool. Overall, it was a really positive day, we’ve made a lot of steps forward and finished most of the work on the ergonomics. We have plenty of new things to evaluate and lots of data to process.

“The main goal today was to get progressively more comfortable with the bike and start tailoring it to our needs. Tomorrow, we’ll keep the same approach, working on the basics and refining little things before we start to push harder and understand the full potential of the bike a little bit better.”

The Aruba.it Racing – Ducati team will resume action tomorrow with Davies for another day of testing ahead of its first collective outing, with Alvaro Bautista joining the WorldSBK regular at Jerez in Spain on 26-27 November.