Andrea Dovizioso has said that despite topping the opening day of MotoGP free practice at the Red Bull Ring, his lap was merely a good one and not a perfect.
After winning last time out in Brno, the factory Ducati rider arrived at a circuit the Italian manufacturer have made their own since its introduction to the MotoGP calendar in a confident mood.
A lunchtime downpour meant that the morning times were the fastest of the day and Dovizioso’s 1:23.830 was a quarter of a second ahead of the next fastest time of his factory Ducati team-mate Jorge Lorenzo.
“It wasn’t a perfect lap; it was a good lap,” said the Italian.
“On this track it’s impossible to create something special because of the layout,. I mean there aren’t a lot of corners and you’re braking in a straight line, so it’s different to make something.
“It wasn’t a perfect lap. The bike worked well. The layout suits my riding my style because there is lots of hard braking. It was quite easy for me to start at a good level.”
Much like in Brno last week, the Ducati’s biggest rival is World Champion Marc Marquez. The Spaniard focused on race set up rather than single lap pace. With that in mind, Dovizioso said he believes that he and Marquez have a very similar pace.
“In this moment I think we have a very, very similar pace,” he said.
“We wanted to put a different tyre in at the end, not to improve the lap time, but to compare the two tyres. At the moment the soft and the medium look like the race tyres.
“We knew there was a big chance to ride in the wet this afternoon, so we used the practice this morning in the best way. We used a soft tyre because it’s a new tyre that we didn’t have last year."