At the end of this afternoon’s excited MotoGP GP in the Netherlands, Andrea Dovizioso (Mission Winnow Ducati) is left with the proverbial “good face to bad play”.
The fourth place collected today in Assen by the Italian, in fact, is a respectable result after the little encouraging indications of previous sessions (see the disappointing 11th place collected in qualifying), but the fact remains the gap in the standings from the ravenous Marc Marquez (Honda Repsol), today second behind the winner Maverick Vinales (Monster Energy Yamaha), continues to grow inexorably, reaching 44 points today after 8 of the 19 rounds on the calendar.
Starting well from the center of the fourth row, Dovizioso quickly climbed the slope to get soon to join up with his partner Danilo Petrucci and the Spaniard Joan Mir (Ecstar Suzuki) fighting for fourth place, while the head trio formed by Vinales, Marquez and the terrible rookie Fabio Quartararo (Petronas SRT Yamaha) had already taken off.
In the second half of the race, Dovizioso and Petrucci were then protagonists of a nice derby made of overtaking and counter-sorption, with Mir who in the end excluded himself from the contest because of a mistake to make room for Franco Morbidelli (Petronas SRT Yamaha), good at sewing up from the back. In the last lap, the “Dovi” was able to successfully defend his fourth position closing however at more than 14″ from the winner, while the “Morbido” was able to slip Petrucci to the last variant to make his 5th place.
With the engines off, the Ducati ace from Forlì said he was satisfied with the result, obtained on a rather difficult track for his Desmosedici GP:
“On the positive side, we were able to bring home the best possible result for us today. After a more complicated qualification than expected and starting from the fourth row, it was easy to make mistakes and take risks in a fight, but we still managed to recover positions quickly and bring home a good booty in terms of points.
“Unfortunately, on tracks like this, our limits are a bit obvious and the gap to the finish line can’t leave us satisfied, so we have to continue to work to make further progress in the areas where we struggle most. We’ll already be trying to do that from Sachsenring next week.
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