Dovizioso happy with Sepang pole

Ducati Corse’s Andrea Dovizioso claimed his second pole of the season after a dominant display in qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix.

The Italian has flown under the radar for most of the weekend. In FP1 of Friday, problems with bike set-up left him down in 15^th and he was only eighth fastest in this morning’s third free practice session.

In qualifying, Dovizioso was one of only a couple of riders to opt for the soft rear wet tyre. On his first flying lap, the Ducati rider guided his Desmosedici GP16 to a 2m11.511s to go well over a second clear of the field. In hindsight, he really didn’t need to do another run but decided to try the harder tyre.

Thinking that he would be unable to improve, Dovizioso surprised himself with a final lap of 2m11.485s to cement his 18^th career pole position. Obviously feeling very confident in the wet conditions, the Italian said afterwards that, had he taken to the track just a little earlier and been able to complete another lap of the harder tyre, he probably could have gone even quicker.

Looking forward to the race, the weather is still uncertain. The Ducati rider is still missing something with his bike in the dry conditions, but he is hoping to rectify this in tomorrow morning’s warm up. Should the race be wet, Dovizioso could very well be MotoGP’s ninth different winner in 2016.

“It was a really strange qualifying session, I reckon I was the only one to fit a soft rear tyre on the first run, and I wasn’t sure that I had made the right choice,” he said.

“Instead our strategy worked well because we were able to immediately set the best time, on my first lap, without even pushing that hard. Then I stopped to try the hard tyre and I didn’t think I could improve. Instead I managed to do so and I am really happy because I even think that with an extra lap I could have gone even faster.

“This morning in the dry it wasn’t great, but this weekend the conditions have been strange. So I hope we can try and improve the feeling tomorrow in warm up. Everyone wants to race in the dry, but we are competitive in the wet.”