One of the more pleasant suprises in yesterday’s FP1 in Qatar was seeing Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso in 5th spot and 0.
873s from the timesheet leader Jorge Lorenzo.
The Italian however is keeping his cool, because his Ducati still has issues and he also suffered braking problems that sent him off track a couple of times, and also suffers excessive tire wear with the softer compound, infact he posted his best time with a hard front tire.
“I’m pleased with the lap time, especially because I did three laps like that and I could have been even better if I hadn’t come across traffic.
Anyway, the times aren’t really a reference in terms of pace, as the first session is always a bit strange here due to the sand.
It’s definitely possible to improve.
The riders ahead of me used soft tyres, and I was the only one to use the hard front.
Tomorrow there are two important sessions in which we can work on our pace,” said Dovizioso.
Nicky Hayden finished 10th in free practice one, but the American rider can’t be happy that he has a CRT rider in front of him and that last season in the opening practice he was third fastest and less than half a second from Casey Stoner.
However as always the American is positive and expects to improve as soon as the track is cleaner.
“It’s certainly good to get the season started.
I was having a lot of trouble in my first exit, and I’m not sure what the problem was.
When we switched to my other bike with different tyres, the feeling improved and I started putting in some decent laps.
I was getting better as the track cleaned up, but I was losing a lot of time in the last three rights.
If I can figure out that section and get it to wheelie less, I should be able to improve quite a bit.
It’s not a great start, but I think if we can improve a couple of things, we can put up a good fight here,” said Hayden.