Coming off the back of two races in two successive weekends, the Ducati Team have arrived in Malaysia for the third and final appointment in this gruelling series of three overseas flyaway events at the end of the season, which will mean that the MotoGP teams have notched up around 35,000 kilometres of air travel in less than a month.
The seventeenth and penultimate round of the season will be held at the Sepang International Circuit, a track that most of the riders enjoy, and which can boast a series of features that make it ideal to unleash the power of modern-day MotoGP bikes: long straights, a wide track surface and plenty of opportunities for overtaking. All the teams came to Malaysia for two IRTA winter test sessions in February, but the conditions were very different to those forecast for this weekend.
The Ducati Team have won three times at Sepang, thanks to Loris Capirossi and Casey Stoner. In the premier class Andrea Dovizioso has stepped onto the podium twice in Malaysia in his five races there, the last time in 2010, while Cal Crutchlow has not gone any higher than a sixth place last year in his two races at Sepang.
After his fourth place finish at Phillip Island on Sunday, Dovizioso has a firm grip on fifth in the overall standings with 166 points (a lead of 49 over Aleix Espargaro), while Crutchlow, who came close to the runner-up slot in the Australian GP, is now in thirteenth place with 63 points.
