Andrea Dovizioso concluded the Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez, home of fourth round of the 2019 MotoGP calendar, in fourth position. The Mission Winnow Ducati rider saved his best for the latter phases of the race, trying to preserve the tyres over the 25-lap distance given also the higher temperatures of the tarmac (42 degrees) compared with yesterday, and progressively cut the gap from the podium in the final laps but couldn’t completely erase it before the checkered flag.
Opting for hard tyres on the front and rear, Dovizioso initially rode in fifth position, then upped the pace within 10 laps to go. Towards the end, he tried to move past Viñales, posting his personal best time in the penultimate lap to finish only three tenths of a second off the podium.
After four rounds, Dovizioso is third in the Riders standings with 67 points – only 3 behind the provisional leader.
Andrea Dovizioso (#04 Mission Winnow Ducati) – 4th
“If we consider the issues we’ve always had in the past at Jerez, we can be satisfied with both our pace and the gap from the front at the end of the race. That said, it’s a pity we couldn’t step on the podium, which was our goal. The race was faster than what we expected, and I lost too much ground at the start. In the final phases, I took quite a few risks to cut the gap from Viñales, but I was still losing too much ground in the faster corners to be able to attack him under braking. We knew that on fast-flowing tracks such as this one we would have struggled a bit more. We need to improve our corner speed, we have done that to some extent already and we’re not far from our rivals, so tomorrow we’ll keep working in this direction.”