Crutchlow and Dovizioso make the best of weather conditions to set fifth and seventh quickest time in TT Assen qualifying

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In an incredible Q2 session, marked by light rain that increased in intensity, Cal Crutchlow and Andrea Dovizioso managed to make the best of the conditions to set fifth and seventh quickest times respectively. As a result the two Ducati Team riders will start tomorrow’s TT Assen, round 8 of the 2014 MotoGP World Championship, from rows 2 and 3 of the grid.

The British rider in particular put together a good result after four difficult free practice sessions. Forced to take part in Q1, Crutchlow managed to move through to the next round, lapping in 1’34.598. Then at the start of Q2, as the rain increased, he immediately set a time of 1’40.796, which earned him fifth place on the grid for tomorrow’s race, his best qualifying performance so far with Ducati.

Dovizioso instead was unable to get the best out of the few moments of dry track time available and had to settle for seventh place on the grid. However Andrea declared he was quite satisfied with the work done today, during which he tried out a slightly different set-up as well as the soft tyre, which gave good results.

Cal Crutchlow (Ducati Team #35) – 5th (1’40.796)
“Obviously again today was a tough challenging day. We went the wrong way with the set-up in FP4 and I couldn’t make the bike turn at all, but then for Q1 we changed something and it seemed to get better. My lap time was almost as fast as my pole time last year, so we can’t really say anything! In the damp conditions, I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t get past the riders in front of me because I feel we could have taken better advantage. The reality is that this afternoon we played the right cards and I threw the chips all in!”

Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 7th (1’41.140)
“This qualifying session was a bit dangerous, but also enjoyable. Those who took the most risks went the quickest, and so in these conditions a seventh place is quite good: all I need to do tomorrow is get off the line well so as not to lose touch at the start. I’m happy with the work we did today, because in FP4 we tried a different set-up, which improved the feeling. We also pushed ahead with the soft tyre: performance drops off a bit, but it proved to be quite constant and I managed to set some good laps at the end.