Dovizioso so close to rostrum yet again

Having been beaten to the line by a tight margin by team-mate Dani Pedrosa at Le Mans and by Valentino Rossi at Mugello, it was Casey Stoner who thwarted Andrea Dovizioso at the Circuit de Catalunya, as the Italian youngster crossed the line just 0.052s behind the former MotoGP World Champion.

Dovizioso got his move into the factory Repsol Honda team for this season courtesy of a highly consistent debut campaign on satellite machinery in 2008, with his only podium finish in the premier class to date coming towards the end of last year in the form of his third place finish in Malaysia.

The 2009 campaign has commenced with six solid results, two fifth places in the opening two rounds, eighth in Jerez and now three consecutive fourths, as he makes obvious but steady progress.

Such is Dovizioso’s competitive nature - and the expectation in the Repsol Honda team, who have now gone a year without a race victory - the 23 year-old will want to start turning those fourth places into podium results sooner rather than later, even if he is regularly battling against the three current best riders in the World Championship in races, namely Rossi, Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo.

Taking the positives from the sixth round of the season Dovizioso commented, “I pushed all the race, overtaking Randy de Puniet and Dani and then to try and close the gap with Casey. In the last six laps I tried to reserve some power because it was so hot in the race and the spinning of the tyres was unbelievable. I couldn’t try to overtake Casey on the last lap because he was pushing at 100%, so it was a shame I couldn’t get the podium, but I’m very satisfied about this weekend.”

“I’m really happy about the race in general as we finished only nine seconds behind the winner and this is really important. Unfortunately I didn’t make a good start because I have a different clutch to the rest of the Honda riders, which is good for me when I am braking but it is much worse for starting, so that made it a difficult race.”