The Ducati Team rider will start tomorrow’s Austrian Grand Prix, round 11 of the 2017 MotoGP World Championship, from the front row of the grid after today’s qualifying session. The 28-lap race at the Red Bull Ring circuit near Zeltweg, will get underway at 14.00 CET.
At the end of this afternoon’s Q2 session, Andrea Dovizioso was second quickest with a time of 1’23.379. This morning the Italian rider was in the top ten of the combined standings after FP3 and as a result went directly through into Q2. Dovizioso was unable to improve on his time of 1’24.046 from FP2 yesterday, but in any case he finished sixth in the aggregate standings for the three free practice sessions.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 1’23.379 (2nd)
“Today was quite a strange day because the temperature was different from yesterday and things didn’t exactly go the way we had expected, but in the end we were able to interpret the situation and do a good qualifying session. We used a different strategy to the other riders, fitting a medium rear tyre which worked well and I’m very happy about the job me and the team did together. We still don’t have a clear idea about the choice of tyres for the race because today they behaved differently from yesterday and tomorrow the temperature should be a bit warmer so it won’t be easy to make the right decision, but qualifying today confirmed that we are competitive enough to be able to fight at the front tomorrow.”