British MotoGP: Andrea Dovizioso continues excellent form

Andrea Dovizioso continued his excellent start to the 2010 MotoGP world championship at Silverstone yesterday.

The 2009 British GP winner ended in a distant second position behind dominant winner Jorge Lorenzo to snatch second in the overall rankings from Repsol Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa.

Third for the opening six laps, Dovizioso disposed of satellite Honda rider Randy de Puniet on lap seven and in the final stages he rode with tremendous poise under intense pressure from American duo Nicky Hayden, Ben Spies and 2007 world champion Casey Stoner.

The former world 125GP champion said: “I’m really happy with second in the race, and we also have second in the championship now so this reflects our strong start to the season.

“In the middle of the race I saw many riders were closing in behind me and so I tried to push at 100 per cent to get a gap and try to avoid a fight on last lap. I didn’t want to be beaten.

“I’m happy about that because my push was enough not to get involved in the fight. It was important to get a gap, which I managed to do.”

Dovizioso might have scored his best result since he won at Donington Park a year ago but he was still no match for Lorenzo and Yamaha’s formidable factory YZR-M1.

Lorenzo led by nearly nine seconds at one stage and Dovizioso said: “We can’t be happy at 100 per cent because our speed is not enough to fight for the victory. It is a really good result and now I’m second in the championship. But it is not enough. 

“We have a small drop of the tyre but the soft tyre worked really good. The problem is that we aren’t fast enough at the beginning of the race like Lorenzo. He had a big difference.”

Asked how he and HRC can stop Lorenzo from romping to his maiden MotoGP world title with the Spaniard in phenomenal form, Dovizioso added: “That’s a good question.

“Every race we have made an improvement and this second is much more important than all the other podiums because our position was second, not like in the other races when I was fighting a lot but I didn’t have the pace.

“But I made my own pace and it was good for second. But there is a difference compared to Lorenzo.”