Dovizioso: Fighting for wins at different tracks is most important

Andrea Dovizioso says being able to fight for victory at the past three rounds puts him in a strong position to attack for the MotoGP world championship as second place at Mugello behind Ducati teammate Jorge Lorenzo helps him kick-start his campaign.

After suffering consecutive crashes at Jerez and Le Mans while fighting for victory, Dovizioso has bounced back with second place at Mugello to leap up to fourth place in the MotoGP riders’ standings while trimming the gap to leader Marc Marquez down to 29 points.

While he accepts the shrinking the gap to Marquez remains a priority, he’s confident of being competitive at a variety of circuits at the following rounds having demonstrated front-running pace at the past three rounds.

“First and second for Ducati is amazing in Mugello and the championship becomes a little bit better,” Dovizioso said. “Coming back to the podium and making the podium in Mugello is a target for the championship is overall I am happy because in the last three races at different tracks we were fighting for the victory. That is the most important thing.

“We started in the best way at Qatar so I think this year it is a completely different story to last year and I think we are more competitive and we are stronger at some tracks where we struggled last year.

"From here I think I can start to gain some points for the championship against Marc because he is still quite far ahead.”

Dovizioso also admitted his surprise at seeing Lorenzo able to maintain his pace while leading over the closing laps of the race at Mugello on his way to a maiden win for Ducati but feels the hotter conditions aided his teammate’s charge as the overall pace was slower due to the high track temperatures.

“I expected Jorge to be stronger today than in the past, I already saw in practice he had the chance to drop less during the race, but I didn’t expect it like this,” he said. “The race was particular as the grip was very low and the pace was slower so you have to adapt to conditions compared to feelings in practice.

“I think he managed the race in a really good way because both tyres he used were really soft so to keep that pace until the end was really difficult.”