Light rain greeted the MotoGP teams this morning at the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit and the weather conditions failed to change much throughout the day. As a result the third free practice session didn’t allow the riders to improve on their times set yesterday and so both Andrea Dovizioso and Jorge Lorenzo had to take part in the early afternoon’s first qualifying session.
The Italian rider was able to go through Q1 with second-quickest time, while Lorenzo had to settle for fourth place, which gave him a row 5 grid slot for tomorrow’s race.
During Q2 all riders went out for their first run with rain tyres on a drying track, which still had a very damp third sector. Dovizioso continued with this solution throughout and set eighth quickest time in 1’48.247, which earned him a place on the third row for the Argentina GP.
Jack Miller powered his way to a spectacular pole position on the Pramac Racing Team Ducati, the Australian taking a big risk by bolting on slicks for his second run, but he mastered the tricky conditions on his Desmosedici GP to grab the quickest time in 1’47.153.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04): 8th (1’48.247)
“Today the situation wasn’t easy at all, because there was drizzle in some parts of the track and the surface was very tricky. This morning we did a good job to work calmly and this afternoon, despite problems with sliding in the curves, I did two good qualifying sessions after using the same rain tyres in Q1 and in Q2, and so I’m happy to start from row 3 tomorrow. With wet conditions my set-up is quite good, but a lot will depend on the amount of water on the track, if it rains tomorrow and it looks like it will. I’m very satisfied with the job my team did, because despite a difficult day yesterday, we were able to really turn the situation round today.”
Jorge Lorenzo (Ducati Team #99): 14th (1’50.063)
“It was another difficult day for us. This morning the conditions were very strange, with the track half-dry and half-wet, and we struggled to find a good feeling. In the afternoon, with the track even wetter, we were quite quick and in Q1, when an almost dry line had formed on the track, I was first before returning to the pits. Unfortunately, because of a misunderstanding with my team who put a soft rear on instead of a medium one, I could only improve by half-a-second and that wasn’t enough to go through to Q2. In any case let’s hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow, so that I can get the best out of the warm-up and improve the bike for the race.”
