Michele Pirro finished in seventh place at the Gran Premio TIM di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini, just behind his fellow Ducati Team rider Andrea Dovizioso.
Pirro raced at the Italian track on the factory Desmosedici as replacement rider for Andrea Iannone, who injured his back in a crash on Friday morning. Pirro was already due to race for Ducati at round 13 but was moved into the factory team on Saturday morning when Iannone was declared unfit.
The regular tester for the Ducati Test Team started the race from row two with the fifth quickest time set on the factory machine in Q2, but he was unable to get away well in Sunday’s race and crossed the line at the end of lap one in ninth place.
Pirro eventually moved up into seventh on lap 23, when he passed Cal Crutchlow, and he finished the race in that position.
Michele Pirro: “I gave away a bit too much at the start: losing three or four seconds early on makes things all the more difficult, but it’s not easy to quickly find the right feeling to start well when you only take part in MotoGP occasionally like I do. In the race I managed to be quite consistent and I didn’t finish too far behind my team-mate.
“I want to thank Ducati for everything, because it’s been a great weekend; I was fifth in qualifying, third in the warm-up and then in amongst the leading group in the race. I also want to wish Andrea Iannone a speedy recovery and tell him that I treated his bike well and that at Aragon he’ll find it in the same condition as he left it!”