Andrea Dovizioso will start tomorrow’s GP de la Comunitat Valenciana from the second row of the grid at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Cheste. The Ducati Team’s Romagna-based rider, who had finished the FP3 session in eighth place, then went on to set sixth quickest time in Q2 with a lap of 1’30.511.
It will be a fourth row start instead for Danilo Petrucci, who was seventh in FP3. The rider from Terni lapped Q2 in 1’30.771 to end up in tenth position.
After setting seventeenth quickest time in FP3, Michele Pirro – making his third wild-card appearance of the year with the Desmosedici GP of the Ducati Test Team – wrapped up Q1 in fourth with a lap of 1’30.949 and will start tomorrow’s race from the fifth row.
Andrea Dovizioso (#04 Ducati Team) – 1’30.511 (6th)
“Today we were able to improve the set-up of my Desmosedici GP and I’m satisfied. It wasn’t easy but we got closer to the frontrunners both on speed and on pace. Starting from the second row is very important, especially here at Valencia, and even though I didn’t do a perfect lap, I was able to set a good time. I don’t know if we will have the pace to be able to fight for the podium, but as always in the race anything can happen”.
Danilo Petrucci (#9 Ducati Team) – 1’30.771 (10th)
“This morning we managed to improve my feeling with the bike and so it was a positive day even though in qualifying I could have certainly done better. Now I’ll have a closer look at the data with my engineers to see where we can intervene for tomorrow. For sure, we’re in better shape than yesterday, but we’re still missing something. We have some ideas about how to improve for the race and we’ll try and put them into practice”.
Michele Pirro (#51 Ducati Test Team) – 1’30.949 (14th)
“It was quite a difficult day because this morning I didn’t have a great feeling with the bike and that made our job a bit more complicated. After finishing FP3 in 17th place I had to go through Q1, where I managed to lap in the high 1’30s. This time however, for just a few tenths it wasn’t enough to take me through into Q2, and so I’ll be starting from row 5. Tomorrow I hope to be able to fight to stay in the top 10 but in any case I’m not far off the times of Dovizioso and Petrucci. As always my team helped me a lot, and I hope to do a good race to finish the season positively”.
The MotoGP riders will be back on track again tomorrow, Sunday 17th November, at 9.50 am for the warm-up session for the 27-lap race, which is scheduled to start at 14.00 CET.