Andrea Dovizioso’s stunning fourth place in last night’s QP2 in Qatar – he missed a front row start by just 0.
001s – has so far shown that the Ducati isn’t that much of dog as many thought, after Valentino Rossi, for his reasons, whether he was unable to adapt or because of the enormous pressure, could not ride the Ducati like it’s supposed to be ridden.
The Ducati still has issues and flaws, and Nicky Hayden’s problems with sudden problems with chatter in qualifying showed it as did Ben Spies front end crash, and even Dovizioso doesn’t know what type of rythmn he’ll have in the race and how long his tires will keep him near the front before going off, but in Ducati’s garage they are hard at work to sort them out while waiting to see the new Desmosedici that Ducati will bring to the gunfight this summer.
On a colorful side note, Italian website GPone.
com revealed that Dovizioso’s telemetry engineer Gabriele Conti was detained by the police for doing some figure eights and drifting with his car in the parking lot outside the circuit after Friday’s free practices.
Ducati boss Paolo Ciabatti had to spend some time to ‘liberate’ Conti and on Saturday presented the telemetrist with a cake with a file inside it.
“I’m very pleased to make the second row, just a few tenths from first place.
I didn’t expect to do a 1:55.
1 lap, or especially to be so close to Lorenzo.
It was nice to have a good feeling with the bike when I tried to push hard with a new tyre in the last laps.
I’m really happy with the work that the team did this weekend because we managed to make it to qualifying with a perfect setup of our electronics, so we were quickly able to use the bike to its full potential.
Starting from the second row will be important for the race.
I still have some big question marks for the race because everything is still new for me, but I’m very motivated for tomorrow.
We’ll see how things are in the race,” said Dovizioso.
Nicky Hayden’s qualifying session turned into a nightmare and as usual he puts the blame on himself, but he too like Rossi and Pedrosa found ‘traffic,’ despite the fact that in QP2 there are now only 12 bikes in the session.
“In the first run, I had a lot of chatter from out of nowhere.
I went back out, and right when I went to start my hot lap, the other guys were pulling out of the pits, and I just made too many mistakes in the traffic.
I’m certainly not thrilled, especially because last year I was one second faster in qualifying.
It was a poor job by me when it counted, but credit to Andrea for a really good session.
I think our setups are very similar, but we’ll definitely have to check his data.
”Photos © Getty Images