Andrea Dovizioso: I had the pace to fight Marquez for Barcelona MotoGP win

Andrea Dovizioso reckons that he could have challenged Marc Marquez for victory in the Catalan grand prix had he not been taken out by Jorge Lorenzo on lap two.

Dovizioso led after lap one of the 24 lap encounter following a monstrous start from sixth on the grid, using his Ducati’s mighty straight-line speed to draft past his rivals on the long run down to Turn 1.

He was then overtaken by Marquez as the Spaniard dived up the inside at Turn 10 on the second lap, before being collected by an out-of-control Lorenzo just moments later.

Dovizioso was forced to retire from the race as a result while chief title rival Marquez stormed to his fourth victory of the season, extending his points lead to 37 over the Ducati pilot in the process.

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The 13-time MotoGP winner thinks that he could have fought Marquez for victory had he not been taken out, citing second-place finisher Fabio Quartararo’s race as an example of how he could have mixed things up with the leader.

“I am very disappointed as we lost a lot of points today and Marc won so the point gap is now really big,” said Dovizioso.

“This is really bad for the championship and also because our pace was good enough to fight for the podium or even challenge Marc.

“When you fight it’s a different story as we can see that Quartararo in the practice was fastest but in the race he was struggling to get second (position) and find his speed like Marc, so the race could have been different had we been there to challenge.

“But this is what happened and it is very disappointing for the championship.

“I think Jorge wanted to overtake Maverick, but he had also broken quite late. Therefore Jorge’s braking distance was too long, and he was already on the inside so he had no other lines to take so had to brake a bit harder and crash.”