Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso used the medium tyre for qualifying at the Austrian GP and the strategy worked out well – putting him in the middle of the front row.
With good race pace and feeling well prepared for tomorrow, the only question that remains is that of rear tyre choice – similar to key rival Marc Marquez.
But with Q2 doubling as a confirmation of their race pace, it’s looking rosy red for the Italian as he attempts to take the second Ducati victory at the track in two years.
“Sometimes a different strategy to everyone else can work and I’m happy with the decision, it was hard to decide and no one else went with the harder spec but the conditions were strange today.” He said
“I’m really happy with the feeling I had in qualifying because it confirmed our speed we’ll have in the race. This morning and afternoon it wasn’t as good as we expected but the tyre worked different to yesterday with a different temperature.”
“And today we used a different strategy in practice, I used the soft tyre and we struggled – we were fast but not how we expected, so in qualifying we confirmed we had good speed and I think that’s the speed for tomorrow. But it will be very important to make the right decision on the rear tyre because it has a big effect, but it will be very difficult because 5 or 6 degrees difference can make a big difference.” He added
“Tomorrow it looks like it will be hotter but we have to decide now – because in Warm Up it will be cooler! On this track the fairing works very well. I think we can confirm to the engineers that it works very well for the target we wanted to achieve – but unfortunately I’ve not followed a really fast rider all weekend and don’t know the acceleration or braking compared – so we’ll see in the race!”
source: motogp.com
