Andrea Dovizioso will start tomorrow’s Dutch Grand Prix at the Assen TT circuit from the second row of the grid after setting fourth quickest time in qualifying, just 79/1000ths of a second away from Marquez in pole position.
This morning the Ducati Team’s Italian rider was unable to improve on his time set yesterday and he ended up tenth overall in the combined standings, but in any case he went through into the afternoon’s all-important Q2 session.
Jorge Lorenzo was tenth quickest in qualifying and will start the eighth round of the season from the fourth row of the grid tomorrow. In the morning the rider from Mallorca was seventh quickest in the combined free practice standings.
The Dutch Grand Prix, which gets underway at 14.00 CET, will be held over a race distance of 26 laps.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04): 4th (1’32.870)
“A gap of 79 thousandths of a second from pole position is very small, but in some cases, like this one unfortunately, it can be very big! In any case I’m very happy because starting from the first two rows of the grid here at Assen is always very important, and also because I didn’t expect to do a lap of 1m32s on this circuit. The qualifying session was a bit strange, with all the riders waiting, but luckily I was at the back of the group and I had Rossi just ahead of me. I’m happy with the feeling with my bike: this morning the wind direction changed from yesterday and we struggled a bit, but in the afternoon we managed to improve. For tomorrow we’re set up pretty good and, even though there are several riders who have a good pace, we are confident we can do a good race.”
Jorge Lorenzo (Ducati Team #99): 10th (1’33.167)
“In general we did a good qualifying session because throughout the day we constantly managed to improve our lap times and to be honest I didn’t think we could have got our time down so much. Unfortunately my position on the grid is not good at all. I was surprised to see myself in tenth place because I thought I was further up, but then I noticed that almost all the other riders were towing each other in the group with Marquez and this helped them to improve their times a lot. I think that in a normal situation we could have been on the first or the second row, but in any case for the race we’re all pretty close and anything can happen, so it’ll be important to get a good start. We’re continuing to lose a few tenths in the final sector and so tomorrow we’ll try and resolve this problem during the warm-up.”
