At the end of the first two practice sessions for the San Marino Grand Prix, scheduled to be held this weekend at the Misano World Circuit, all three factory Ducati riders finished the day inside the top 10 in the standings, with Pirro seventh, Petrucci eighth and Dovizioso in tenth position.
Both Petrucci and Dovizioso recorded their best times in the FP2 session in the afternoon, while Pirro set his fastest time this morning but was then unable to improve in the second session.
Danilo Petrucci (#9 Ducati Team) – 1’33.728 (8th)
“Today we weren’t entirely satisfied because we are still struggling to get the best out of the tyres, and even with the soft option, which I put on at the end of the second session, I was unable to make a significant improvement on my time. However, we’ve got some ideas about how to improve the situation and now we’ll have a good look at the data of both sessions in order to see what direction to take for tomorrow.”
Andrea Dovizioso (#04 Ducati Team) – 1’33.826 (10th)
“This morning we started off pretty slowly because we knew that the track conditions were not particularly favourable for us and we did several tests with the set-up, which in my opinion went in the right direction because my feeling improved over the two sessions. We are not yet amongst the quickest riders but we’re getting there bit by bit: for sure there’s a lot more work to do but we have some ideas about how to improve the bike tomorrow.”
Michele Pirro (#51 Ducati Test Team) – 1’33.704 (7th)
“Today we got back a bit of the feeling and the speed that we had in the test at the end of August: there are still certain aspects of the bike we have to work on because we are still missing something, but in the two sessions we brought home some useful information, and in any case both this morning and this afternoon my times were in line with those of the other Ducatis.”
The Ducati Team riders will be back on track tomorrow, Saturday 14th September, at 09.55 (CET) for the third free practice session, while qualifying will be held after FP4, starting from 14.10 (CET).
