Andrea Dovizioso will start from the fourth row of the grid in the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix, which takes place tomorrow at 07.00 CET (16.00 local time) at the Phillip Island circuit. After finishing eighth in FP3 in the morning and then crashing without harm in the next free practice session, the Italian took part in Q2, which was held on a dry track, and finished eleventh with a time of 1’29.496.
It will be a sixth row start for Jorge Lorenzo, who after yesterday was outside the top 10 and who this morning was not able to improve his time in the wet FP3 session. The Spanish rider crashed out spectacularly, suffering bruises and a sprained left ankle. Jorge however took part both in FP4 and in Q1 but was unable to do any better than sixth (1’30.085) and will start the race from row 6.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 1’29.496 (11th)
“The crash in FP4 conditioned my qualifying session a bit. We could surely have gone quicker, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to ride as well as yesterday and so we start down the grid. A real pity, but that’s the way it went and now we have only to think about tomorrow to try and work out where we can improve, because in any case my pace with the medium tyre is not bad. We’re not going to give in and we’ll see what we can do in the race.”
Jorge Lorenzo (Ducati Team #99) – 1’30.085 (16th)
“It was a very tough day because things went totally in the wrong direction. This morning the rain meant that it was going to be impossible for us to improve enough to get into Q2 and obviously the crash didn’t make the situation any better. It was a bad crash and I rolled over a number of times in the gravel: I immediately thought I had broken something, but luckily the x-ray ruled out any fractures and only confirmed a sprained left ankle, which hurts a lot. In this condition we weren’t able to improve the bike in the dry and tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain, we’ll go back to our original settings on Friday to try and make a step forward. It’s going to be a long hard race but I will try and find a good pace and fight to the finish.”
