Dovizioso: ‘We need to get the full potential from our package’

Reflecting on the Gran Premio bwin.com de España Repsol Honda’s Andrea Dovizioso admitted he must do better after finishing eighth in Sunday’s race and being overtaken in the standings by his team-mate Dani Pedrosa, who raced to a brilliant second place at Jerez.

Dovizioso qualified in eighth place and started the race well, despite his later complaints of traction problems, making it up to sixth place in the opening laps. A battle with Randy de Puniet then ensued and the Italian rider tired to hunt down the fourth placed Jorge Lorenzo after eventually getting past the Frenchman, only to be undone by an eighth lap skid which saw him leave the asphalt.

Soon getting back in the race, albeit in 16th position, Dovizioso started to fight back and after a great effort he finally crossed the finishing line in eighth.

“I’m not happy to just finish in the top ten, but the problem was that there was much less grip in the race than in practice and it became a big issue, especially on corner entry in the first few laps,” Dovizioso explained. “At turn eight I went in and immediately lost the rear end grip so I went off track and the serious racing was finished for me. I was trying to catch Lorenzo but I couldn’t manage it.”

“I’m not satisfied with eighth position here and we need to do better because we didn’t use the full potential of our package here,” he continued. “We have to set that as our target now before we start getting new parts from Honda.”