Following a third free-practice session that was rendered largely useless by a damp track caused by last night’s rains, the Ducati Team found itself unable to come up with an ideal setup for qualifying this afternoon. At day’s end, Andrea Dovizioso and Nicky Hayden were ninth and eleventh, respectively, putting them on the third and fourth rows for tomorrow’s Aragón Grand Prix.
Although both riders had hoped for higher starting positions, they’re relatively pleased with their qualifying times.
Andrea Dovizioso – Ducati Team, 9th (1:49.219)
“Unfortunately, this is our position at the moment. We’re all going quite fast, but I’m satisfied with my qualifying time since I managed to improve by a second compared to the previous sessions. After following Bradl, I was able to drop some hundredths while riding by myself on the last lap, so I’m happy about that. Maybe we can battle with Smith in the race, although he’s a couple of tenths faster than I am. The riders ahead of him are quite far off.”
Nicky Hayden – Ducati Team, 11th (1:49.428)
“At the end of the morning session, we went out on the damp track to get a feel for it, but it wasn’t very useful. We were able to improve something in the afternoon and were a lot faster than I went here last year, but everybody’s going a lot faster. Honestly, I’m quite disappointed to be so far back, but that’s the situation we’re in. We’re getting a lot of tyre wear because there are long corners where we’re on the edge of the tyre for a long time, but we have a couple of ideas for the morning that might help that. For the race, we need to get through turn one clean, see what happens with tyre wear and try and do our best.”
