The Ducati Team returned to the track at Brno following a three-week summer break since the German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring circuit.
At the end of today’s two scheduled free practice sessions, Andrea Dovizioso had recorded the fourth quickest time in 1’56.071, just a couple of tenths of a second off the provisional pole time set by Quartararo.
Team-mate Danilo Petrucci was also inside the top 10 with a provisional first day time of 1’56.593.
Andrea Dovizioso (#04 Ducati Team) – 1’56.071 (4th)
“Here at Brno you need the bike to be pretty strong under braking if you want to go fast, and it seems that the hard front tyre is a bit more stable than the others. It was a bit of a strange session, because the possibility of rain tomorrow forced everyone into trying as many things as possible, both with the tyres and everything else. We have to study the pace of our rivals well: all things considered, mine is good and in line with the quickest guys out on the track. But we know that in the race the rear tyre suffers a big drop and so you can’t really understand certain details well in the practice sessions: in any case I did a pretty good lap with the soft tyre, and I only used one. Let’s hope we can work well in the dry tomorrow, because otherwise we’ll all start the race with some doubts. Today I tried the new fairing, but we weren’t able to make a real comparison because we also had to test a lot of other things, but in any case the overall feeling is good.”
Danilo Petrucci (#9 Ducati Team) – 1’56.593 (10th)
“It wasn’t very easy to start off with the hard tyre today, because this year there doesn’t seem to be much grip at Brno, and above all there is a lot of tyre wear so in the race you have to manage it well. For the moment I’m not able to be very quick, because I’m struggling a bit to stop the bike, but there’s certainly margin to improve: both Andrea and Jack went quicker than me so now we’ll have to improve. We understand the direction to take so let’s hope the weather will be good tomorrow. I think we’ll use the new fairing again tomorrow, because this morning it helped me and I’m happy with the feeling it gave me.”
The Ducati riders will be back on track tomorrow, Saturday 3 August, at 09.55 (CET) for the third free practice session, while qualifying will be held after FP4, from 14.10 onwards.