Dovizioso: “I'm really happy about how we started"

Italian just pipped to the post on home turf to end Day 1 in P2

Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) topped FP1 at the Gran Premio d’Italia Oakley, and the two-time GP winner was fastest in FP2 until late in the day, when a fast one from Cal Crutchlow (LCR Honda) pushed him down to second – but only 0.029 off the top.

Wanting to begin the weekend well to mount a podium challenge at the home round of both rider and team, ‘DesmoDovi’ fulfilled that ambition on Day 1 and will now be pushing in FP3 to keep his provisional place in Q2 safe.

Andrea Dovizioso, P2: “I'm really happy about how we started. We did a test here so for sure this helped us to start with a good feeling. I am not so happy about my speed in the middle of the corners, it’s where I suck compared to some other riders and where I lose time. In all of the other parts of the track we are very competitive and our laptime is good, so I’m really happy about the feeling today, but it will not be enough because tomorrow others will be able to improve and we have to improve our speed in the middle of the corner. It was important today to start things this way. We tried a lot of things but we didn’t really improve where we needed, but we tried some different things in some other parts of the bike and it helped us a little bit. I believe the speed we have here is because of the track.”