Difficult Sunday for Ducati despite promising weekend

Sunday at the GoPro British Grand Prix didn’t produce the goods for the Bologna factory. Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team) was desperately unlucky to get caught up in Fabio Quartararo’s (Petronas Yamaha SRT) Turn 1 crash, while teammate Danilo Petrucci and Jack Miller (Pramac Racing) lost ground at the start because of the incident.

After further medical checks at Coventry hospital, thankfully Dovizioso is cleared to return home this evening after an incredibly heavy landing. Unfortunately though, it seems his title aspirations have gone up in flames after Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team) picked up 20 points. On the other side of the box, Petrucci was able to claim P7 after being caught out by his teammate going down the road.

“I knew it would be a difficult GP but the accident in the first corner has conditioned my race because I had decided to stay on the outside and I found myself behind Andrea and Quartararo and I lost many positions,” began Petrucci.

“Then I started to come back and it was not easy to overtake other riders but in the last ten laps I have been especially fast and I made my fast lap in the penultimate lap. It is true that without the accident it would surely have ended later, but when you go out so far, everything can happen. I feel bad for Andrea, who has lost a good opportunity and I hope nothing serious has been done.”

Starting from the front row, Miller also encountered issues at the start. The Australian had a terrific qualifying to sit as the leading Ducati rider in P3 on the grid but he too couldn’t keep up his weekend pace on Sunday afternoon.

“The start wasn’t ideal. I used the holeshot device but wasn’t able to get it to disengage into Turn 1 and yeah, that allowed the heap to go around me and then I also got a little bit caught up in the Fabio and Dovi incident.

“Managed to get it out by the time I got to Turn 4 but it wasn’t too fun going down there, essentially riding an orange candy chopper it felt like. But no I wasn’t overly happy with the performance of the rear tyre. But we have to understand it was to do with our settings and what we need to work on in Misano next week.”

They showed plenty of promise, and Dovizioso would have been in with a podium shout for sure, but Sunday at Silverstone wasn’t Ducati’s day. A home turf Grand Prix comes at then next in the form of Misano, can their fortunes change there?