Dovizioso and Crutchlow take positives from Indy visit

Andrea Dovizioso

In the first race since it was confirmed that Dovizioso will ride with Ducati for the next two years the Italian made a good start, having done well in qualifying on Saturday to place himself second on the grid.

Dovizioso led the charge at the front with Movistar Yamaha MotoGP’s Valentino Rossi, before both ran wide and Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda) and Jorge Lorenzo (Movistar Yamaha MotoGP) joined the party. Dovizioso would ultimately fade from second to seventh, but he was upbeat about the result.

“I’m really happy to have ridden for 15 laps at the front. I think we have to look at the positives. We made some small changes on the bike, but it was still the same really, we can’t change completely our limits this year. I’m really happy about the improvement of our speed. We knew that over the 27 laps though we would not be able to maintain a good lap time. But we have to be happy about this weekend,” commented Dovizioso.

Crutchlow, meanwhile, had finished 20 seconds adrift of his teammate in eighth but he was also pleased enough, having got through a first race since surgery on both arms since Sachsenring.

“Happy to finish and if you would have offered me eighth place on Friday I would have been happy to take it. I’m disappointed with how far we are away from the winner but I didn’t expect to be much closer to be honest. I had a good battle with (Scott) Redding, sure my bike was faster than his but we were really struggling on the corners this weekend,” said the Englishman.

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