“Sir Delius is in fantastic order."

Adrian Bott has indicated that Melbourne Cup fancy Sir Delius is tracking nicely as the imported stayer prepares to race in the Group 1 Underwood Stakes (1800m) on Saturday.

The four-year-old UK import impressed in his Australian debut in May, winning the Group 3 Chairman’s Handicap at Doomben over 2000m on a Heavy 8 track and finished second in the Group 2 Chelmsford (1600m) two weeks ago.

The Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott bay is the heavy favourite to take out Race 7 at Caulfield and Bott believes we haven’t even seen his best yet.

“Sir Delius is in fantastic order,” Bott told SENTrack and RSN’s Giddy Up.

“I thought it was an excellent first-up run from him, he’s come through that in really good shape.

“He’s had a bit of time to get down to our Melbourne stable in Flemington and settled in really well.

“So, he just seems in incredible shape going into Saturday’s race.

“He’s pretty versatile, he’s shown both tactical and cruising speed. He does have a bit of class in how he can accelerate.

“We haven’t seen him over his best trip yet.”

Despite all the promising signs surrounding the Melbourne Cup fancy, Bott admitted both him and Waterhouse are still learning about their import.

“We’ll still learn more about him come Saturday,” Bott revealed.

“He’s having a short turn around between runs which obviously isn’t your traditional European campaign which they’re used to.

“Last prep he only had the one run for us.

“We are learning more about the horse but from what we’ve seen he seems in really good shape."

Sir Delius' second-place finish in the Chelmsford even surprised Bott with how impressive the stayer was at the mile.

“He was probably a bit sharper than I expected, but in fairness he probably needed to be to be on the potential path that we had in mind,” Bott admitted.

“Had he not, we might have had to pivot slightly.

“The exciting part about him is that we are seeing nice improvement on him.”

Sir Delius will be making his debut Caulfield run this Saturday and despite questions around whether the import will be able to handle the track, Bott believes he will run very positively.

“He seemed to be very comfortable in the work that he’s done down in Melbourne,” Bott admitted.

“He seems very comfortable that way of going, he’s sort of got straight on to that Melbourne leg and handled the work nicely.

“All indications (that he can handle Caulfield) are positive at this stage.”

Sir Delius races on Saturday in Race 7 at Caulfield. That is set to take place at 3:40pm