Dovi powers to important second
Andrea Dovizioso got his championship aspirations back on track with a strong second place at Mugello. The Italian couldn’t match team-mate Jorge Lorenzo but still managed to take a useful 20 points out of Marc Marquez’s title lead. Mugello is one of Dovi’s favourite tracks and is one that saw him transform his fortunes last year with a stunning victory. While he couldn’t repeat the trick on Sunday, he was still happy with the overall result. He said: “We could have had five points more but going home with 20 points in this heat and with Marc scoring a zero is not bad. We started this season in the best way in Qatar, and we’re more competitive and faster, especially in tracks where we struggled last year. Marc still has quite a lead, but we can now start to gain some points back on him.” But Dovi also finished Sunday’s race disappointed, admitting afterwards that he believed he had the chance for victory if it hadn’t been for a conservative tyre choice.
He said: “To tell the truth I expected more than a second place, but in the end we found that the conditions were hotter in the race and so we had a few doubts about the choice of front tyre.
“Vale and I made a safe selection, opting to fit the harder tyre, but unfortunately it didn’t work well. Normally I’m the better rider at saving the front tyre and Jorge uses it more, but in the end he completed the race with no problems and maybe we took the wrong decision.
“We were so slow in the middle of the corners and the front closed every time I opened the throttle, so I knew that I was taking too many risks so we slowed the pace down. It’s a shame because we had the chance to win and doing that at Mugello is always something special.”