 Hodgson said he found it difficult to feel the front of the MotoGP bike |
World Superbike champion Neil Hodgson has admitted it is proving more difficult that he expected to adapt to his new MotoGP bike. The Englishman, who last rode a Grand Prix bike in 1995, tried out his MotoGP Ducati in Valencia earlier this month.
He said: "It's really like having to learn to ride a bike again; the front of the bike seems so different to what I'm used to.
"I actually thought it would be a little easier to ride."
Hodgson, 30, will test his new machine again in February at Sepang in Malaysia and hopes to make more progress.
He said: "I definitely learnt a lot from my first test on the machine in Valencia a couple of weeks ago.
 |  I found that the front of the bike seemed really alien to me |
"I'm ready to start building on that now. If you're building a house you start by laying the foundations. "I'm not saying I've got quite that far yet but I've started digging the trenches, at least."
Hodgson will be riding a privateer Ducati for Team D'Antin, while former World Superbikes rival Troy Bayliss, who switched at the end of 2002, rides for the works team.
He added: "The power is so smooth and instant that it actually gives you a lot of feel on the rear end, there's no lag at all.
"So I never felt like I was going to high-side the bike [get into a dangerous wobble] but found that the front seemed really alien to me.
"The power really pushed the front end a lot more than on my Superbike.
"Team D'Antin seemed really, really good and we seemed to gel straight away so we never had any problems there."
The MotoGP season stars at Welkom in South Africa on 18 April.
MMIX
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