Andrea Dovizioso will start tomorrow’s Czech Republic GP at the Brno circuit from the second row of the grid after today’s qualifying session. The Ducati Team rider was fourth quickest in Q2, held on a damp track which gradually dried out during the session. Dovizioso, who opted to do the entire session with rain tyres, set a best time of 2’05.590.
This morning the FP3 session was held on a wet track and no one managed to improve on yesterday’s times, so as a result both Ducati factory riders went through directly into Q2 in the afternoon.
After a first run on rain tyres in which he set a time of 2’06.457, Danilo Petrucci came back into the pits to use his second bike fitted with dry tyres, but he was unable to improve his best time and so tomorrow will start from row 3 of the grid for the Czech Republic GP.
Andrea Dovizioso (#04 Ducati Team) – 2’05.590 (4th)
“After my first run in Q2 I was sure we could have made a further improvement on our time and on my second run, with the hardest rain tyre available, I thought I could lap in 2’05 but I wasn’t sure if that would be enough. In the end I managed to do a good lap and even though I’m not on the front row, it’s OK in any case because today, with the track conditions we encountered, it was very easy to make a mistake; the most important thing was to start as close to the front as possible and we did that. I’m happy above all because in the dry yesterday we were quite fast and tomorrow it looks like there will be good weather for the race. Obviously Marquez is ahead of us, and he’s always very strong, but also Rins and Viñales will be competitive tomorrow. We’ll have to see their choice of tyres and in any case we will have to do a good warm-up to arrive at the race with a good feeling.”
Danilo Petrucci (#9 Ducati Team) – 2’06.457 (8th)
“It was a very complicated qualifying session because the track conditions were difficult to interpret. The track was wet and then it gradually got drier, but towards the end of the session it started to rain again and unfortunately I wasn’t able to be quick when I went out on slick tyres. In any case, even though our aim is always to start from the first two rows, row 3 is not bad at all and tomorrow I hope to get a good start and then play my cards in the race, which looks like being dry.”
The Ducati Team will be back on track tomorrow, Sunday 4 August, at 09.40 (CET) for the warm-up session in preparation for the race, which is scheduled to start at 14.00.