Andrea Dovizioso says achieving a podium in Sunday's MotoGP race in Texas will be “difficult, but not impossible” after qualifying in eighth.
The Ducati rider has struggled for most of the weekend, failing to crack the top three in any session so far, though this has come as no surprise to Dovizioso who expected to find the going tough at the Circuit of the Americas.
Dovizioso, along with the other Ducati riders, has found the Desmosedici to be reacting poorly to CoTA's bumps, so in a rare move ran the aerodynamic fairing on Saturday in a bid to improve this.
The Italian feels this, along with set-up changes after Friday's running, has improved his chances of battling for his “real target” of a top five, and believes the “door is open” to challenge for the podium.
“We struggled like we expected, but I'm really happy because it's not so easy to improve the situation day by day,” he said.
“I think we made the right decision with the fairing, the set-up, and we did a good pace.
“To try to fight for the podium, that is our target. I know this will be very difficult, but not impossible.
“I'm not happy with the third row, but we have all the feedback to try to improve out limit, and the target is to be on the podium.
“Top five is the real target, but we have to keep the door open for the podium because it will be difficult, but not impossible.”
Dovizioso – who was eight tenths down on poleman Marc Marquez's lap – knew Ducati would suffer more in qualifying prior to FP4, but opted to focus on evaluating the harder rear tyre in a race run rather than find a solution for Q2.
“In the qualifying we found another problem, our limit, but this is positive for the race,” he added.
“We already had that idea before free practice four, but we didn't try something because we wanted to try the hard rear tyre to have the right feedback, because some other riders try and looks good.
“In the qualifying that limit was bigger, so this is the reason why I was not so fast in some parts of the track.”
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