Dovizioso: "We took the wrong decision on the rear tyre"

'DesmoDovi' had to settle for P3 at the Red Bull Ring after suffering with rear grip in the latter stages

Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) was unable to take his second consecutive victory at the Red Bull Ring after finishing third behind race winner Jorge Lorenzo (Ducati Team) and Championship leader Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team), with rear tyre issues hampering the final ten laps of his race.

“Well there is a positive and negative point to this weekend,” commented Dovizioso. “We confirmed we have really good speed and our bike works well in this track, also every track, this is very important for the Championship. The negative is unfortunately it looks like we took the wrong decision on the rear tyre because we have different tyres (to Lorenzo and Marquez) and at the end we lost more, I had to give up 10 laps too early from the end which I didn’t expect.”

Up until 10 laps to go, ‘DesmoDovi’ was right on the tail pipe of teammate Lorenzo as the Desmosedici’s chased down Marquez, but the Italian couldn’t make that vital overtake on the eventual race winner: “I was very disappointed because I was feeling good, I was good on the braking but unfortunately, I couldn’t overtake Jorge, he was braking very hard, stopping in the middle of the corners and for me it was very hard to overtake him. I couldn’t put myself in a perfect position and that cost me.”

A mistake at Turn 1 all-but ended Dovizioso’s chances of a win, but was being behind Lorenzo a race-costing situation, reminiscent of Jerez earlier in the year? Dovi feels like he could have caught Marquez quicker, but isn’t sure the end result would have been any different: “A little bit for sure, if at the end I was able to change the position, I don’t know, because I lose too much grip on the rear in the last 10 laps, so I don’t know.”

The three at the front all chose opposing rear tyre options: Lorenzo the soft, Marquez opted for hard and Dovi the medium. The wrong choice on the number 04’s behalf it seems, but Dovizioso didn’t want to lay 100% of the blame on this alone: “I’m not that rider to say this was the problem. The problem is always a mix of things, my position during the race and the tyre choice.”

A disappointing end to the weekend for the Ducati man, but next up is a track he won at last season: Silverstone. How is the 32-year-old feeling ahead of the British GP? “I’m really looking forward to it because it’s a wonderful track, it’s very difficult there and let’s see if we can have some good weather. Last year we won with the best strategy, we weren’t the fastest, so we have to work very hard but for sure we will be strong.”

Watch all races LIVE & OnDemand and enjoy the whole motogp.com video library, including technical features, exclusives interviews and classic races, with the MotoGP™ VideoPass – Now 50% OFF!