During the weekend Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) was only once inside the top five, when he was second in Q1 to earn passage into Q2. The race offered no salvation for him, jumping up to seventh in the first two laps before getting pushed down to eighth and then ninth. With his teammate Andrea Iannone (Ducati Team) and Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP) crashing out together, Dovizioso was promoted to seventh place. The factory Ducati rider spent the closing laps of the race fending off Danilo Petrucci (Octo Pramac Yakhnich). Seventh is not where Dovizioso is aiming to be, the Italian hit hard by a lack of rear grip.
"Something wrong on the rear tyre and together with Michelin we are having a look to study exactly what happened"During the post race-test in Montmelo, Dovizioso worked extensively on tyres alongside Michelin. Over the course of 55 laps he set a best time of 1’44.968 and ended the day in seventh position. Dovizioso and the Ducati Team are hoping for a return to form in Assen, the Barcelona circuit not suiting the bike. After being so strong at the start of the year and able to challenge for podiums on a number of occasions, Dovizioso has been hit by a number of issues and simply unable to find his speed again.
Andrea Dovizioso: “Obviously I’m not happy with today’s result. In the race I felt there was something wrong on the rear tyre and together with Michelin we are having a look to study exactly what happened. I could feel the lack of grip since the warm-up lap, and at a certain point the drop of the rear tyre became too much and made it impossible for me to continue in those conditions. In any case our bike here at Barcelona wasn’t as competitive as it has been at other tracks and so now it’s important to understand what didn’t work in order to improve the things we are still missing.”