Second and third row starts for Ducati Team riders in GP of the Americas. Jorge Lorenzo sixth and Andrea Dovizioso seventh in qualifying at Austin
The two Ducati Team riders will start tomorrow’s GP of the Americas, held at the modern Texan circuit on the outskirts of Austin, from the second and third rows of the grid.
At the end of this afternoon’s qualifying session, Jorge Lorenzo obtained the sixth quickest time with a lap of 2’04.151 while his team-mate Andrea Dovizioso was classified in seventh with a time of 2’04.431.
In the morning the MotoGP riders went out on track under dark skies and with a temperature of 16°, more than 10 degrees lower than yesterday. The session was characterized by a high number of crashes, including one apiece for both Ducati Team riders, but luckily they came away unscathed.
In the end neither Dovizioso nor Lorenzo were able to improve the times they set yesterday in FP2 and so the Spanish rider had to take part in Q1, in which he was second quickest, thus going through to Q2 together with Miller.
The 21-lap GP of the Americas is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at 2 pm local time (21.00 CET).
Jorge Lorenzo (Ducati Team #99) – 2’04.151 (6th)
“Fianlly today we were able to obtain a good result, after a few difficult weeks. I am the best Ducati on the grid, but the most important thing is that I had a good feeling on my bike, and I managed to confirm what I had wanted to demonstrate in Argentina. Tomorrow it’ll be very important to get off to a good start, try and take as few risks as possible in the early laps, and above all finish the race because I want to put behind me the disappointment of the last GP. It’s going to be a very tough race physically, but I feel strong and I am very happy with the work that me and my team are doing.”
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 2’04.431 (7th)
“Once again today we found strange conditions, but in the end I’m happy with the way the afternoon went. Despite a couple of little problems, we did however manage to do a run at the same time as the race and we were able to improve. I don’t think it will be possible to fight for the win tomorrow, but for sure we can go for a good result. Unfortunately in qualifying on my second run I made a few mistakes and was not able to set the time that I could have done. Pity about seventh place on the grid, but in my opinion tomorrow we can do a good race.”
