The Ducati Team rider will start from the second row of the grid for the Grand Prix of Japan, round 15 of the MotoGP World Championship, which will be held on Sunday at the Twin Ring Motegi circuit, having clocked the fourth-quickest time of 1’44.322 in qualifying.
Dovi set excellent time in this morning’s FP3, in which he also turned in a good race pace, and the session ended with a good third place.
In the early afternoon’s FP4 run, the Ducati Team’s Desmosedici GP15 bikes appeared on track with two extra new “winglets” fitted to the front fairing, the aim of which is to reduce the bike’s tendency to wheelie. The session finished with Dovizioso seventh.
Dovizioso immediately put on the extra-soft rear tyre in the decisive qualifying session and went on to set his quickest time on his second run, finishing the day in fourth with a gap of 0.532 seconds from poleman Jorge Lorenzo.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 1’44.322 (4th)
“I’m a bit disappointed about my fourth place in qualifying, but I think that at the most we could have got a third place and nothing more. So for me that’s OK, because I also feel we’ve worked well throughout the weekend and we have a good race pace. We’re still missing a bit of pace to stay with Lorenzo, who is quite far away, but we are back to being quick and amongst the frontrunners once again. Now we’ll only get a better idea of how competitive we are in tomorrow’s race.”