Dovizioso motivated by Mugello experience

Tuesday, 02 June 2009

Having run in the lead early in Sunday’s race and missing the podium by just 0.053s Andrea Dovizioso was in high spirits at the end of the weekend in his native Italy.

Despite missing the podium by a tight margin for the second MotoGP round in succession Andrea Dovizioso was not disappointed after the Gran Premio d’Italia Alice, taking motivation from fighting at the front and running in the lead in the early stages.

At the chequered flag, Dovizioso was just 2.129s behind race-winner Casey Stoner and followed ‘the king of Mugello’ Valentino Rossi across the line by the tiniest of margins. Earlier in the race he had made the best of his wet set-up, running in second place in the initial laps, dropping back to third before taking the lead for the first time on lap four.

Afterwards he stated, “The sensation of being in the lead in the race was really good, here in Mugello with so many fans it was so nice. Our strategy was perfect but we couldn’t fight for the victory because we weren’t fast enough. Anyway we were very close so this is important.”

“With three laps to go I tried to keep in contact with the others and when Rossi overtook me, I managed to stay with him. Then I tried to slipstream him out of the last corner but I couldn’t make it. Anyway, all in all it was an exciting race and a positive result.”

On his overall performance levels Dovizioso added, “We are getting closer, but still not close enough to win. We need to keep on working because we are still not as competitive as the fastest riders, especially in dry conditions. I want to say thanks to the team because they did a great job today, and we’ll use this result to give us extra motivation.”