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With Danilo Petrucci ninth and Jack Miller twelfth, team Pramac will be able to aim for a top ten placement tomorrow for both riders and, with a bit of battling and skill, even something more.
Danilo will start from the third row after a very hard qualifying session: “I have never seen qualifiers with eight riders packed into a tenth and a half – Petrux recounts – but by now, we are used to such narrow gaps. I could have obtained more. I did a lap pretty much at the limit, but I am still happy because I worked well and I have a good race pace.”
How did the Desmosedici GP18 behave?
“Compared to the previous tracks, here in Jerez the asphalt has more grip and this is the good difference for us. The situation is still complicated. When grip is low, we struggle and we can’t hope for a podium even here in Jerez, that much is clear: the three Hondas are the favourites and then Zarco and Iannone, then Rossi and Viñales… there will be a lot of fast riders tomorrow.”
So what goals have you set for yourself?
“I won’t rule anything out. Tomorrow I want to be the best Ducati, but it will be difficult. Dovizioso is a step ahead in confidence on the bike and Lorenzo is very strong in Jerez, but we were consistently close and sometimes ahead. Tomorrow we might make a different tyre choice swimming against the current. We’ll see depending on our data. The soft could do the race – we’ll see. In FP4 we tried the medium, but it had a drop in performance. I think that we will risk using the soft: it takes guts to swim against the current of what the data says. To battle with the best 24 riders in the world, it takes a lot of courage.”
Jack Miller also battled with his rivals throughout the day, as well as against the heat: “I struggled a little bit in qualifying with the extra heat – Jack explains – I just didn’t really get the lap together. In the first one I had Danilo in front of me and I thought that was a good marker. When I went out with the second tyre I didn’t have the performance I wanted because it was spinning. We’re analysing the data, but there was some strange spinning and in really strange spots, but I’m really happy that we were able to get the lap time this morning and go directly to Q2.”
In terms of race pace? The forecast is calling for it to be hotter.
“I threw in the hard front tyre for FP4 and really worked on my race pace and I’m really happy with it. Every lap was a ’39, except for the last two where I ran into traffic, so I’m really happy with that. Pace shouldn’t be a problem. For tomorrow we’ve fitted two hard rears that we’ll try in the warm up.”
Crutchlow on pole, is Pedrosa a point of reference for you? He knows how to use the hard tyres.
“Dani’s lower weight most likely helps him. He has about a 20 kilo advantage on us, but the fact that his is able to get it work is amazing and a credit to him. Tomorrow after the Moto3 and Moto2 races the track will have more rubber on it and it will be the hottest time of the day, so it will be a special race. Last year Lorenzo was on the podium, riding clean consistently with a benchmark pace, so that shows that here in Jerez you have to ride smart and try to save the tyres.”
