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Dovizioso eighth, Hayden twelfth in Misano Free Practice
The GP di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini kicked off in perfect conditions, with sunny skies and mild temperatures, but at the completion of day one, the Ducati Team wasn’t satisfied with its early efforts at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli.
The first free-practice session ended with Nicky Hayden and Andrea Dovizioso seventh and eighth quickest, respectively. The afternoon session saw Dovizioso improve his best time by .112 seconds to 1:35.392, which left him in the same position, whereas the American wasn’t able to improve his morning time and dropped to twelfth.
Both riders will work with their teams during tomorrow morning’s free-practice in an effort to improve their setups for the afternoon qualifying sessions.
Andrea Dovizioso - Ducati Team, 8th (1:34.901)
“We’re all quite close but the feeling is a bit worse than when we had our test here. It’s a few degrees cooler and my Desmosedici works a little differently. This track is pretty tight and slow, and we must work to improve by a couple tenths in order to get our pace below 1’35”. That will be very important in order to have a chance to fight for positions further up in the field.”
Nicky Hayden - Ducati Team, 12th (1:35.392)
“I obviously wasn’t thrilled with the day, but I do think we can improve quite a bit for tomorrow. There are a couple of sections where I’m losing the most, mainly on change of direction, but I’m going quite well in other places. It was a bit bumpy, but that’s nothing we didn’t expect for Misano. I wasn’t happy with my last exit of the afternoon as I made some mistakes. My ideal time is half a second faster, so I’m confident we can do a good step forward tomorrow.”