Dovizioso takes second row despite mistake

Andrea Dovizioso will look to open his tenure as a Repsol Honda rider with a podium on Sunday, and put himself in a prime position at the head of the second row of the grid. The Italian said afterwards that he had made an error in the session, although he did not pay too dearly for any mistake.

Teammate Dani Pedrosa refused to throw in the towel during the session, and made improvements to his Friday time despite being in considerable discomfort. He will begin the Commercialbank Grand Prix of Qatar from fourteenth.

Andrea Dovizioso -4th

“I’m very happy with this fourth position. We worked hard during qualifying, testing the two bikes with two different set-ups. Both solutions gave good feedback, I was confident, and the machine performance improved. I’m happy with the rhythm we found for the race with the hard tyres, and also the lap times we achieved with the soft tyre. I’m satisfied also because I had room for even more improvement during my last lap with soft tyre - in fact I made a mistake and I spoiled the improvement I’d made in T1. I think racing suits my style and mentality better than practice so I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

Dani Pedrosa -14th

“Well we’ve made it into the race and that was the aim of coming to Qatar so I’m please with that. I didn’t expect to improve my lap time by this much from yesterday so this is good progress. The leg feels a little better and I pushed harder today than yesterday, though this situation is not something that is fixed after one day. My lap time is not really so bad considering my condition and the time I’ve spent away from the track, but for sure I wanted to be faster than this and a bit further forward on the grid. Still, the race is here we’ll get ready to give it the maximum effort tomorrow. Maybe I can improve my lap times by a further second or so.”