After taking his first MotoGP pole position for this weekend’s MotoGP in Japan, Andrea Dovizioso also managed to bag his 5th podium of the season after finishing in 2nd at Motegi.

Dovizioso converted his pole position into a good start, but Casey Stoner managed to slip up the inside into turn 2 and led for the rest of the race to take victory. Dovizioso managed to stay with Stoner all the way and looked to be closing in to challenge on a number of occasions, but tyre issues forced him to settle for 2nd position.

ANDREA DOVIZIOSO
“I pushed at 100 percent for the whole race and the lap times of Casey and me were pretty impressive and very consistent. At the beginning, Casey was really fast when the tyres weren’t fully up to temperature and at that moment I knew it was going to be a hard fight with him. I don’t know what Casey did to up his pace today but his speed was amazing. There were two or three places on that lap where he was faster than me every time, but I saw that he was also on the limit and so I kept pushing. It was hard to maintain the pace on the tyre in the last few laps and I nearly had a big highside three laps from the end – at that moment I knew I couldn’t win the race. It was a little bit disappointing because I wanted the win and I thought it was possible today, but I’m really happy to be back on the podium again. Following Casey I learned a lot about the strategy for tuning the electronics settings for the final part of the race when the tyre performance is dropping off, so this is really positive for the future. I want to say thank you to the team because I’m in this position thanks to their hard work. And also thanks to HRC – I’m really glad to have a good result at Honda’s home race.”

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