Andrea Dovizioso says his fifth place in the German GP at the Sachsenring was pretty much the best he could hope for given Ducati’s lack of speed during the weekend.
The Italian was beaten to fourth by team-mate Danilo Petrucci by less than a tenth-of-a-second while Pramac’s Jack Miller-who also competes on a factory-spec GP19 machine- was sixth just a couple tenths further behind.
The trio took the chequered an alarming 16 seconds after race winner Marc Marquez though, with Dovizioso now slipping to 58 points behind the Spaniards championship advantage with ten races remaining.
The 2017 and ’18 MotoGP championship runner-up has won only once so far this year, in the season opener at Qatar, and has failed to score a podium since his home race at Mugello three races ago.
Dovizioso explained how he was in fact more worried about the manufacturer’s form on so-called ‘Ducati tracks’ such as Mugello and Barcelona, where the likes of Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki have all closed down the advantage the Desmosedici has enjoyed over the past few seasons.
“I said yesterday if we could finish fifth it would be a dream, so at the end of the weekend we go home with good points considering the speed we had this weekend,” reflected Dovizioso.
“Unfortunately I didn’t make fourth which was possible, but we inherited two places as two fast riders crashed so we can’t be happy with our speed.
“We are disappointed about this as this is the reality, and yeah Sachsenring isn’t our track but the gap is too big.
“Also on our good tracks we are struggling compared to the past so we are not happy and need to have a strategy for the next circuit as in the middle of the corners we are too slow.
“Ducati always work really hard and we will see, but now we have three weeks to rest before the second half of the season.”
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