Dovizioso: Ducati in the pack at Le Mans

Andrea Dovizioso feels a more competitive front-running order is present at Le Mans compared to last year’s French MotoGP and is eager to find overnight gains from his Ducati to move up the timesheet.

The Italian rider, who was tipped as favourite for victory in this race 12 months ago before crashing out, has ended Friday practice fifth fastest but just 0.308s off pace-setter Maverick Vinales on the Monster Yamaha.

Dovizioso feels with under half a second covering the top seven riders the fight for the top spot will be more competitive than in 2018 but it won’t disrupt his working process to extract performance from his GP19.

“We’ve just started the weekend, but my sensations on the bike are quite good. Compared to last year, however, there are more competitive riders so there’s quite a pack fighting for top positions, but we’re part of that,” Dovizioso said. “We still need to improve some details to be able to keep the pace we have in mind.

“We tried different setups and evaluated several tyre options, making a step forward during FP2, but we still have room for improvement and we’ll need to be smart and put together all the data we gathered to be even more competitive tomorrow and prepare for the race in the best possible way.”

Petrucci endured a stop-start FP2 for Ducati due to a crash on his opening out-lap on the exit of Turn 8 which duly shook up his programme but after regaining his composure to take sixth spot on the combined times, within two-tenths of Dovizioso, he remains confident of making similar gains to his team-mate overnight.

“The crash at the beginning of FP2 forced us to slightly modify our programme,” Petrucci said. “The feeling with my Desmosedici GP was slightly better during FP1, but I think this is due to the trickier conditions of the tarmac in the afternoon, as the multiple crashes seem to indicate.

“We’ve made a comparison between different setups and now we’ll look for the best possible compromise to make another step forward tomorrow.

“I want to try to be more competitive during qualifying and then play our cards right during the race.”