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Third row for Ducati Team in Silverstone qualifying
Day two of the British Grand Prix was marked by sunny but chilly weather, with track conditions that encouraged the MotoGP riders to set a blistering pace in the qualifying session at the Silverstone Circuit.
Ducati Team riders Andrea Dovizioso and Nicky Hayden were pleased with the improvements made to their Desmosedici GP13 race machines, but with the other riders getting faster as well, they qualified in seventh and ninth positions, respectively, and will start tomorrow’s race on opposite ends of the third row.
Andrea Dovizioso - Ducati Team, 7th (2:02.123)
“I’m really pleased with my time. We all set good times, and I doubt if anyone could have expected we’d be able to lower them so much. Maybe the track improved a bit, but the new tyre also made a big difference when we didn’t have much fuel. We’ve worked well the whole weekend, and I’ve been pretty fast. I think our race pace is still quite a way off, but we’re certainly going better than we have at the other races so I think if we’re able to have a consistent race, we might have a smaller gap to the leaders. It might be an unusual race because the tyres drop off after about six laps. You couldn’t see it much in practice, but I think that the same thing as last year will happen.”
Nicky Hayden - Ducati Team, 9th (2:02.289)
“We’ve definitely improved a lot today, but everybody is going faster as the track gets better. I’d hoped to do a low 2’02”, which I did. I thought maybe I could squeeze onto the second row, but one tenth made a big difference today. I made one little mistake on my best lap, which hurt me a little bit. Also, I have a hard time using the hard front tyre, so I chose to go with the soft front, which was better over the bumps but was also moving in some places. We need to try to make that work for the race and do a couple of little things to help with change of direction. We know it’ll be tough, but we’ll see what we can do.”