Dovizioso: Video helps a lot, 'it's clear what happened here'

With his Argentine MotoGP hopes over after leaving his front holeshot switch in the wrong position at the start, Andrea Dovizioso re-joined the race several laps down.

Peter McLaren

07 Apr 2022

Andrea Dovizioso, Argentinian MotoGP race, 3 April 2022

Any chance of a meaningful result was over, but the RNF Yamaha rider was able to work on some ideas to help increase his corner speed on the M1, with positive results.

The inspiration came not from a set-up change or data analysis, but from video footage.

"We are working a lot on the data. Trying to analyse, compare. But for a rider and especially in my situation, where I really still have to adapt in the way I ride the bike, when I see some video, it helps me a lot," Dovizioso explained in Austin on Thursday.

"Unfortunately, we couldn't get a lot of video. I think from this weekend we will get some more from Yamaha, to compare with the other riders. Simone [Battistella, manager] showed me something after the warm-up in Argentina, in just one corner, and it helped me to make more metres [wider lines].

"With the Yamaha you have to be so fast in the middle of the corners. Whereas normally in the past, with the other bikes, I always tried to do less metres in the corners. And that became my base.

"In the [Argentine] race I was trying to go a bit more in that [mid-corner speed] way and it helped me, because in the end - it's true that I was alone and it's a bit easier - but my pace wasn't bad. In the race I was the same as practice and everybody else went slower than practice.

"I don’t want to say I've found something, but I was feeling a bit better and for sure I have to go in that direction. But unfortunately, it's so unnatural for me to ride in that way and every weekend it doesn't come instinctively, so I'm losing a lot of time."

Dovizioso hopes the attendance of Yamaha's cameraman at COTA will help him speed up that process.

"It's impossible to film a lot of corners, in every practice, because there is just one person [filming]," he said. "But just to have a comparison between me and the other Yamahas and the other riders helps me a lot to immediately understand, 'okay, it's clear what happened here and this is the way to be a bit faster'.

"Because when you study this from the data, you can understand some things, but you don’t have the position of the rider on the track etc. So you have to 'predict' what's going on."

All factories make use of such video footage, often overlaying the images to highlight differences between the riders and bikes.

After technical issues in the last two races, Dovizioso's best finish so far is a 14th in the Qatar season opener.