MotoGP: Dovi makes the most of Marquez disaster

One person that came out of Sunday’s Argentinian Grand Prix smiling was 2017 championship runner-up Andrea Dovizioso, making the most of rival Marc Marquez’s disastrous day to take home safe championship points. Struggling all weekend with the Ducati at the Termas track, he looked to be set for a disaster of his own until fortune favoured him in the race.

“It was a very difficult weekend because we weren’t fast and started the race with no rhythm and no speed. But going home with sixth position after some luck is very positive for us and for the championship, and two of the riders fighting against us for the championship scored zero.”

Yet despite salvaging a good result, Dovizioso admitted afterwards that their old problem with mid-corner turning still persists on the 2018 machine. Especially bad at tracks with long and fast corners and a large part of the reason why he was unable to take the fight to Marquez in the final races of 2017, he says it still needs work.

“The negative thing from the weekend is that we’ve confirmed our difficult situation in these kinds of tracks, because when you have to spin the rear tyre in the middle of the corner it becomes very difficult. We didn’t have a chance to work on it properly through the weekend, but we weren’t close to finding a solution so we can’t be happy about that.”