Danilo Petrucci has said that he is lucky that his engine broke when it did to avoid a potential MotoGP qualifying disaster in Brno.
The satellite Ducati rider had a scary moment at the end of FP4 when his rear tyre locked, forcing the Italian into the gravel. Luckily Petrucci managed to avoid crashing, but was also thankful that it happened at the end of FP4 and not in qualifying.
“I don’t know if it’s a broken engine. But if it is a broken engine then, it’s okay because we have to remove it tonight anyway because it was at the end of its kilometres,” said the Italian.
“It was a shame to break the engine after the chequered flag but I was lucky, because if the engine went one lap more and I broke it in qualifying that was a problem, so we have been lucky in the end.”
Petrucci compared the experience to that of an old two-stroke bike with the locking and said his motocross experienced helped him keep the bike upright once in the gravel.
“We have to live with it,” he said. “It was like with a two-stroke. I closed the throttle and the rear wheel locked! I was quick to pull the clutch and go straight into the gravel. Anyway, my motocross experience helped.”
The Pramac Ducati rider yesterday tested a new fairing yesterday but today decided to go back to using the older fairing. When asked why, he simply said that they only have one of them so he wanted to keep the fairing for the more important qualifying session.
“We did because we only have one and I use it in qualifying,” Petrucci said.
“Unfortunately I broke one winglet so for this reason I was with only one fairing and it was quite a risk. The difference are really, really small, but anyway in MotoGP a thousandth of gap is important to lead to something more. The target is to be in the top five.
“For sure it will be tough, Dovizioso showed the real potential only this afternoon but if you watch carefully in FP3, FP2 even FP4 he rode with very used tyres. And this I think made him so fast. Like me this morning, I used a very used tyre and then when I put the new one I was immediately faster than everyone.
“Tomorrow we will continue to work on the set up because the first ten laps of the race we think we cannot attack or push, because we have to care about the tyre. For me as always it’s a bit more difficult because of the weight. In this temperature a smaller rider with the g-force in the corner stress less on the tyre. So it’s a little bit unfair, but we have to take the advantage of my weight on braking. The target is the top five but if it’s possible to make the podium we will try.”