CHAZ Davies endured a frustrating opening to the World Superbike Championship (WSBK) in Australia.

The Presteigne star went into the season opener aboard a Ducati Panigale V4R but failed to make a mark as new team-mate Alvaro Bautista stole the show at Phillip Island.

The Spanish rider stunned the rest of the field by winning both races as well as the Sunday sprint event having upset the odds by eclipsing the weekend achievements of defending WSBK champion Jon Rea on a Kawasaki.

In contrast Davies struggled with 16th place in the opening race before claiming seventh in race two after Ducati technicians carried out major modifications to his Panigale V4R..

Davies said: “We managed to make some progress in the second and I felt better with the V4R which is the most important thing.

“Race one was rather disappointing. Initially I was quite happy but I suddenly had such a massive drop of rear grip.

“It felt like I was riding in sand and we will have to have have a look at the date to figure out why.”

Davies confessed with the opening race proving such a disaster he and the technicians looked to learn as much as they could about the bike in the second race.

“After the opening race result we had nothing to lose so the guys in the team made some major changes that allowed me to slightly improve my race pace.

“I know how to manage a race at Phillip Island and I felt like I was relatively conservative for most of the race but I hit trouble at two-thirds race distance and wasn’t expecting it.

It shows we are inexperienced with this new bike. I thought could see us into the top six in the second race but that wasn’t the case.”

“I’m still a bit disappointed because we didn’t expect this result, but we picked up a lot of useful data to understand what I need for the next race.

Meanwhile Davies praised his new team-mate.

“My congratulations to Álvaro, because he was really impressive all throughout the weekend,” said Davies.