At the end of the second day of official MotoGP testing at the Losail circuit in Qatar, Andrea Dovizioso was second quickest in the timesheets with a time of 1’54.627, while his team-mate in the Ducati Team, Jorge Lorenzo, concluded in fourteenth place.
A few drops of rain, which fell at the track on the outskirts of Doha in the early afternoon, disturbed the first part of the session, but after that the MotoGP riders were able to continue their testing without any problems in preparation for the opening round of the season on 18th March at this same circuit.
Tomorrow, the final day of testing will finish at 20.00 local time, one hour earlier than the two previous days, to give the organizers the possibility to soak the track with water and allow the riders to lap in these conditions under floodlights from 20.30 to 21.00. They will then be able to express their opinion to the members of the Race Direction on the possibility of racing the Grand Prix of Qatar safely even in wet conditions.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 2nd – 1’54.627 (41 laps)
“Even though the uncertain weather conditions didn’t allow us to make use of all the time available, in the end we managed to test everything we had scheduled. I’m very satisfied with the feeling with the bike: on this track the Desmosedici GP has always worked really well, but this year it’s going even better. My best time I set in a mini long-run of 12 laps which I did this evening, and I have to admit that the times came quite easily. Here in Qatar however every day we can find different conditions and so we must try to be quick tomorrow as well and conclude our work schedule.”
Jorge Lorenzo (Ducati Team #99) – 14th – 1’55.562 (53 laps)
“Today was quite a complicated day for me: at the start a light rain conditioned the first few hours of the test but then we were not able to be competitive in normal conditions. In the early afternoon, when it’s still warm, the times come quite easily, but when the temperature drops I’m lacking confidence in the front tyre and am not able to be fast. We still have a few ideas to test tomorrow to try and resolve this problem and prepare for the GP of Qatar in the best possible way.”
