Cal Crutchlow and Andrea Dovizioso qualified for the Grand Prix of the Americas, the second round of the MotoGP World Championship which will be held tomorrow at the Austin circuit in Texas, respectively in seventh and tenth place.
After encouraging form shown during the four sessions of free practice, both Ducati Team riders hoped to make further progress in qualifying, but unfortunately neither Crutchlow, who had a low-speed slide at Turn 11, nor Dovizioso, who is still suffering from the effects of flu, were able to improve their times and as a result the British rider and his Italian team-mate will start Sunday’s race respectively from rows 3 and 4.
Cal Crutchlow (Ducati Team #35) – 7th (2m03.780s)
“This weekend our back’s been up against the wall a bit and we’ve had some issues, but the team has worked hard to sort them out. We improved the bike for the qualifying but seventh was all we got. I also came off at turn 11, spinning round in a circle at 28 k per hour for some reason! I’m not going to make excuses because I was pushing for the lap time. Today I had a lot less rear grip, maybe because of the track conditions, but for sure we need to analyze everything tonight to change the bike set-up a bit and make it work better with the harder option race tyre.”
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 10th (2m03.846s)
“I am a bit disappointed with tenth place on the grid, which for sure will not help me much in tomorrow’s race, especially in the early laps. Today I struggled a lot: physically I’m very weak because I’m taking antibiotics for my flu and my muscles feel pretty bad. It’s not ideal at all to race with a high fever in MotoGP, especially at a track like Austin, because it drains you of all your energy. Tomorrow I’ll try and do a good race: I’d say that with our pace in the early laps we can be quite close to the front, but we’ll have to see if we can keep it up for the rest of the race.”
