It was not the best Sepang MotoGP weekend for Pramac Ducati’s Danilo Petrucci but despite all odds, the Italian sprang a surprise coming from dead last on the grid after a bike issue to take sixth place.

A problem with his number one GP17 on the sighting lap meant Petrucci was forced to start from the last row, but as a strong competitor in wet conditions he recovered nine positions at turn one. In the first laps the feeling was not the best, but then his race pace started to improve. On lap seven, Petrucci passed Alvaro Bautista and Andrea Iannone to get inside the top ten.

Three laps later he attacked Valentino Rossi and Pol Espargaro to take seventh before passing Scott Redding for sixth place. The Honda of Dani Pedrosa was too far and there was no way for the Italian to catch him as his rear Michelin had given up.

“I lost another great occasion to finish on the podium. It’s the fourth time this year that we suffer a technical problem in the race . Despite that, even if I had to start from the back of the grid, I was confident I could make a great recovery, but I had no traction and the bike was sliding a lot,” said Petrucci, speaking at the track.

“I overtook nine riders at turn one, then on the third lap, Michael Van der Mark, at his first race in MotoGP with Yamaha, passed me from the outside. I was struggling a lot because the tyres were not working very well and I was losing positions. I didn’t know what to do. I did the race with Valentino, he was also suffering the same problems.

“We don’t know what to do, we have no solutions and as we could see in these overseas races, we cannot do two good races in a row. Yes I have to be happy of this sixth place because we earned important points for the championship, but honestly our rivals were doing another race today. Now have to look positive and see what we can do in Valencia for the final round.”