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"I always think of the championship." A determined sentence, without mincing words and one that demonstrates how, for Andrea Dovizioso, who said it, the title victory is always a goal. Even after the two consecutive victories of Quartararo and the double second place of Maverick Vinales.
"We have our chances - said Dovi at the end of the race - in MotoGP everything changes from one track to another, the world championship is open. Today, for example, Pecco Bagnaia showed what our real potential is, he was very fast, as was Miller, there is a reason and when I ride just as well, things will change. Pecco makes the bike slide differently than me, it will be a starting point, I will look at their data, as everyone does in all the factory teams ".
Dovizioso: "Bagnaia showed the Ducati's true potential"
How do you judge your situation in the ranking?
“I was hoping to have more than 26 points after Jerez. But in the end what matters is how you draw the line at the end of the race. All in all, the points collected in Jerez in these conditions are not so bad. With a better start, I might have had the chance to fight for the podium. Today when I released the brakes, I could not insert the bike properly in the curves and keep the line and this caused me problems, but I know that we are taking the right path. I couldn't push as much as I wanted, I had no cards to play to get back to Mir. In any case, I want to see the glass half-full and not half-empty, because these two weeks have given us a lot of data to work on to make us ready when we get to the tracks that help our bike most. "
Dovizioso: "If Marquez will return 100% at Brno, he will fight for the world championship"
About Marc Marquez: with 50 points less than Quartararo, can he still be considered the favourite for this world championship?
“We have to see how he will come back at Brno, whether he can push 100% or not. This will make a big difference. Marc made only one year of mistakes, then he has always been ahead of the rest. When he has a specific goal, he usually makes fewer mistakes than the others if you look at his history. I thought not, but I believe that in the end he will be fighting for the world championship, also because we need to see this matter of the Yamaha engines, because this is a season where you have to manage the races. They know the situation well and will know it even better when they can check the engines, but this can affect the world championship. Quartararo has 50 points and they are a lot, and he is also on good form and will be fast on all the tracks ahead of us. We were a long way away here, but for the championship we have before us, we are not in such a bad shape. In my opinion, also thanks to the tyre that is now available, this championship is still completely wide-open for all the riders. "
Dovizioso: "We got some good points on two difficult tracks for us"
Will these races be important for renewing your relationship with Ducati?
“Everything affects the contract, but for now I'm still so focused on the job. We did things that usually we don’t do on a race weekend, but we are forced to do it because we are still long way away in many things, we are not where we should be yet. I don't want to justify myself, but in the end, we brought home some good points in two difficult races on paper. I'm always pretty critical of myself, but now I want to give myself a reasonable score. "
Yours was a bit of a low-key race, did yesterday's disappointing qualifying affect you?
“Starting from 14th place certainly didn't help me, but this weekend has been positive in any case. We tried a lot of things over the weekend and collected a lot of data, then we will have to be good at interpreting and using them. The race was strange because I had a problem that had never occurred on the weekend, in the middle of the curve I had difficulty keeping the line. I don't mean it was a problem with the tyres because everyone was suffering. I was unable to push from the start and I stayed there at the same distance. I didn't gain and I didn't lose, if I had started further up the grid, I would have been in the fray as well. Of course, finishing sixth isn't that bad on this track, even if it didn't come thanks to our speed and only that. "
Dovizioso: "Bagnaia is the one who brakes better than all the other Ducati riders"
You said earlier that during this weekend you did a lot of tests. In what way did the GP20 improve at Jerez?
"We made progress with the electronics but we didn't take advantage of what we learned in the race, there was a different grip compared to the morning. It has been a bit abnormal for two weeks, almost like a test. A lot has happened, we have to get all the information in the right way. Pecco is interpreting our bike well, in my opinion he is the one who brakes better than all the Ducati riders and I don't want to copy his style, because everyone has his own, but certainly by looking at the data I can learn something. We will study, here we have collected a lot of data to work on and the situation in my opinion after these two races is clearer. We are not yet in the situation I would like, but I am optimistic ".
So can all this work help you in the near future?
“The work done here will be fundamental at Brno. In my opinion things will go differently, here the conditions were unusual while there we will be able to fight for the victory but we must learn to manage well some things that we are still missing. In any case, these two weekends have been anomalous and cannot show us the way forward, because they have been too unusual ".
On Friday you were also talking about new things on the bike set-up, why didn't they work?
"For various reasons we worked well on the set-up but then we did not go fast enough in qualifying and everything became complicated. It was true that in the end in front of me some riders broke down or crashed, but I felt fast enough, it was not such a negative race. We worked the right way, especially in view of the future. It seems to me that the championship started last week in Jerez, despite the tests in Qatar. There we saw that it was difficult, but in any case, we got into good shape at Losail ".
