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Wednesday's crash cost Danilo Petrucci dearly. "A real shame, it wasn't even my fault, I slid off on oil" he rightly complained at the end of a disappointing qualifying session, which ended with him in 14th place. It’s been an uphill start to the weekend, to which his ailments can also be added.
“For me it will be a race of survival, I won't be able to attack. I will have to deal with my physical condition and with a not yet perfect set-up" explained the man from Terni.
Let's start with your physical condition, how do you feel?
"Bad. I couldn't sleep tonight, I had to take painkillers last night and take infiltrations this morning. The doctors had warned me not to make any efforts, but yesterday I could not stay still. Since yesterday afternoon I have felt severe pain in the neck and shoulders, in qualifying I tried to limit the damage. I wasn't even slow, in fact, with my time I would have been 5th in Q2, unfortunately I stopped in Q1 ".
Let's move on to the technical problems…
"We managed to get a good set-up a little too late, but I'm happy with the improvements we made and this gives me confidence. But we still have to understand the new Ducati well, we still change the balance in every session and the new Michelin tyre does not help us much. Even today I got on the bike with a lot of question marks, but now I'm more confident, as I said. "
We saw a lot of crashes, what is the reason for this?
"The temperatures are very high, 60° C on the asphalt and it is slippery. To find grip, you lower the rear of the bike, but thus unload the front and in fact many riders crashed entering the corners, when coming off the brakes, in slow corners. We are lapping in extreme conditions, tomorrow we will have to carefully manage the 24 laps of the race. I feel bad for my physical condition".
Are you using the variable set-up system?
“Yes, I was one of the first, together with Miller, to use it and I am quite used to it now. The advantage from a chrono point of view is limited, we’re talking about a few hundredths, but I think it can help in overtaking, especially on a track like Jerez where it’s more complicated, because it makes the bike more stable both when braking and when exiting the corners. On the other hand, it is not so simple to use, because you push buttons throughout the race. "
