Date : 20/06/2010
Weather : Dry
Temperature : Air 17 degrees, Ground 29 degrees
Humidity : 27%

DOVIZIOSO SECOND AT SILVERSTONE, PEDROSA TAKES EIGHTH
Repsol Honda rider Andrea Dovizioso extended his run of MotoGP podiums by taking second place in today’s British Grand Prix and recording his best finish of the 2010 season so far. The result promotes Dovizioso to an impressive second place in the World Championship ahead of his Repsol Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa who came home in eighth place today.

Dovizioso put on a combative display at Silverstone to convert fourth on the grid into second at the chequered flag and take his fourth podium finish from the first five rounds of the year. By the end of lap one he was up to second place and then entered into a battle with Randy De Puniet which lasted for almost the entire race. As today’s winner Jorge Lorenzo broke away at the front, Dovizioso and De Puniet traded places before the Repsol Honda pilot made his decisive move on lap 11. He was able to open just enough of a gap to fend off his pursuers to claim 20 championship points.
It was a difficult race for his Repsol Honda team-mate Pedrosa who was unable to find the same consistent pace in the race that he had established in practice at Silverstone this weekend. The Spaniard struggled for grip during the 20-lap encounter with the rear wheel spinning and the front end pushing as he tried to maintain position in the early laps. Pedrosa had shown promising pace through the weekend, but another unfortunate fall in cold conditions in the morning warm-up meant he wasn’t able to find the same feeling in today’s race. An eighth place finish sees Pedrosa lying in 3rd in the standings as MotoGP moves to the Netherlands for round six of the World Championship next weekend.

 

ANDREA DOVIZIOSO – 2nd – World Championship position: 2nd 78 points

 “I’m really happy with second in the race, and we also have second in the championship now so this reflects our strong start to the season. In the middle of the race I saw many riders were closing in behind me and so I tried to push at 100 per cent to get a gap and try to avoid a fight on last lap. Corners 13 and 14 towards the end of the lap are really slow and you can see clearly the riders that are behind, and also here it would be easy to be overtaken on the last lap if they were too close, so it was important to get a gap, which I managed to do. I’m so pleased with the season so far and I’d like to say thank you to Honda and to the team for the work they are doing. We still need to improve so that we can battle for race wins, but we are one step closer today and it’s a good result for us at the start of a busy period of races. Next stop is Assen and we must move forward again so that we have a chance of winning there.”

 

DANI PEDROSA – 8th – World Championship position: 3rd 73 points

“Well, eighth is obviously a disappointing result because we were looking quite strong here yesterday and I was confident. However, we were lacking some grip from the beginning of the race and we couldn’t replicate the pace we were able to achieve in practice. The rear was spinning and sliding quite a lot and the front was pushing which meant that, even though I was pushing really hard, I wasn’t able to maintain my pace. It was frustrating because I could see the riders in front and I could stay with them but it was impossible to fight for position. The one positive thing from the weekend is that even though I had two crashes I wasn’t injured and I didn’t feel pain during the race today. This means we can quickly put this weekend behind us and move on to the next races - the first one being Assen next weekend. I'd like to thank the team because they worked reall y hard this weekend and had to rebuild the bike twice.

 

TOSHIYUKI YAMAJI - REPSOL HONDA TEAM MANAGER

“This is a good result for Andrea and he put on a strong performance today to achieve his best result of the year so far. He is improving all the time and I expect him to get a race victory soon. Actually this was quite a difficult race weekend for the Repsol Honda Team because Dani had two crashes and Andrea also had a crash and this disrupted our machine set-up process to some extent. Both Andrea and Dani fought hard today but finally Lorenzo made the perfect race and we couldn’t follow him. So now we have to quickly regroup so that we can compete for the win at Assen.”