It was a difficult qualifying session today for the two Ducati Team riders at Silverstone. In Q2, held in heavy rain, Andrea Iannone was eighth quickest with a time of 2’21.446 and will start from the third row of the grid for the British GP at the famous airfield circuit. Andrea Dovizioso crashed on his fifth lap and suffered bruising to his right knee, which he had injured in private testing last week at Misano. The Romagna-born rider notched up tenth quickest time with a lap of 2’22.420 and will start from the fourth row.
In the third free practice session, held this morning on a dry track, Iannone placed third while Dovizioso finished FP3 in seventh. As a result, both Ducati Team riders went through directly into the afternoon’s Q2 session.
After the early afternoon’s FP4 session, which was held on a wet track and which ended with Dovizioso in second place and Iannone fifth, the two factory Ducati men then went out on track for qualifying, which finished with Iannone eighth and Dovizioso tenth.
The British GP, round 12 of the MotoGP World Championship, will start at 16.30 CET tomorrow afternoon.
Andrea Iannone (Ducati Team #29) – 2’21.446 (8th)
“We went very well in FP4 on a wet track but in qualifying it started to rain very heavily and the conditions changed. I tried to push hard, also taking some risks, but I was unable to do any more than I did. I’m disappointed about having to start from row 3 because we have always been competitive this weekend and once again the rain that fell at the last moment ruined everything we’ve done. However I’m quite satisfied with my bike in the dry and this morning we made a big step forward with the set-up, even though I crashed in FP3. We worked well and made the bike easier to ride and so tomorrow, if it’s dry we have a chance to do a really good race.”
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 2’22.420 (10th)
“I feel really bad about the crash, because I was doing a good lap and I could have probably got onto the front row, but the conditions were very difficult and I made a mistake. Unfortunately I crashed on the same injured knee from the Misano test, but luckily I didn’t suffer anything more serious. At the moment my knee is pretty swollen and has a few cuts and scrapes, so we’ll have to see if it’ll give me any trouble tomorrow. I think that without the mistake I could have been a lot further up the grid, so it’s a real shame having to start from row 4 because this makes my race a bit more complicated.”
