UPDATE: Ducati World Superbike

After some positive test sessions at Jerez de la Frontera in Spain, Ducati's FIM Superbike World Championship team, Aruba.it, had a less impressive result in the recent pre-season test at Phillip Island. On a very pleasant Australian morning with air temperature at 75 degrees and the track at 98 degrees, Davide Giugliano lapped in 1:31.948, which was the third best time of the session. Teammate Chaz Davies was seventh, at 1:32.512.

Bad luck struck in the afternoon. Giugliano crashed, hurting his back badly enough to have him taken to Alfred Hospital in Melbourne where a CAT scan revealed the fracture of the L1 and L2 vertebrae. They are small fractures, but they will cause Giugliano to skip the first race of the 2015 SBK season. Davies, for his part, progressed in the afternoon setting a 1:32.114 that kept him in seventh position.