The first two free practice sessions for Sunday’s British Grand Prix at the fast Silverstone Circuit took place today in mild and sunny weather conditions.
Andrea Dovizioso, after ending FP1 in fifth place, notched up exactly the same place in the second FP2 session, setting his quickest time at the end of the 45-minute run with a soft rear tyre.
Team-mate Andrea Iannone, who was fourth quickest in the morning’s free practice run, then had a harmless crash half-way through the afternoon’s FP2 session. After stepping onto his second bike, the Italian fitted a soft rear tyre in the last few minutes to make a slight improvement to the time he had previously set on race tyres. He concluded the day in eighth place in the combined free practice standings.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 2’02.761 (5th)
“It wasn’t an easy day, but I think it was more or less the same for everyone, especially because the track conditions were difficult because of the presence of numerous bumps. Silverstone is quite complicated to interpret because it is wider than the other tracks and it allows more lines, but what is positive is that we have more margin for improvement. During my numerous runs, I approached the track in several different ways and for tomorrow we will try and be as smooth as possible. We are still a bit far away from the leaders but all things considered today didn’t go bad.”
Andrea Iannone (Ducati Team #29) – 2’03.219 (8th)
“It was a bit of a strange day, above all because of the crash that slowed down the work of my team, but in any case I managed to set a good time on a used race tyre and I was improving on it before the crash. Now we have to analyze things to see if the modifications we made created a few problems, or if the crash was caused by a dip. Today however was positive and we will try and make a further improvement tomorrow ”
