Davies confident he can improve form

The British rider had been recruited for the last three rounds of 2007 after D'Antin sacked Alex Hofmann. Davies had impressed the team earlier in the season when he deputised for Hofmann at very short notice after the German was hurt in practice at Laguna Seca.

He qualified 17th at Phillip Island, then battled for 15th with Sylvain Guintoli in the race before retiring on lap 13.

"Just went into Turn 2, something locked up and the bike has an automatic shutdown system when it senses something is wrong," Davies told the BBC.

"It locked up, then the alarm light flashed, then the engine cut out, so I just had to retire it and that was the end of my race."

He said he was satisfied with his race performance and was confident that he could built on it at Sepang and Valencia as he became more familiar with the D'Antin Ducati.

"The start was pretty poor, but the first few laps were really good and I was doing low 1:32s easily," Davies said.

"Then we ran into the same sort of trouble that we had in practice and qualifying - it just started losing a bit of rear grip and losing a bit of stability. But we can work on that.

"It's been a bit of a mis-match of a weekend with all the weather, so it can only get better from here on in now that I've got a bit more time on the bike and the mechanics know what I like with the bike. We can start working towards that."