Andrea Dovizioso was fastest on Friday of the French MotoGP Grand prix. Marc Marquez was second while Valentino Rossi gave the third best time.
Dovizioso celebrated his achievement by announcing a new contract with Ducati.
“Luckily we had two full dry sessions to start our work on the bike, and the weather forecasts are also pretty good for the rest of the weekend – not really a given here in Le Mans. So we had the opportunity to work on our race setup, and we concentrated on trying to understand the tyres. We tried all the rear tyres, and we just missed trying the hard front, which we want to check tomorrow. Today I did my fastest time with the hard rear spec, which had about 10 laps on it. It was a positive first day but we need to keep working, as we want to improve a bit of everything in the setup since everything seems really, really tight here”, Marquez said.
Rossi added that he and the Yamaha started the weekend in a good way
“I was quite strong in FP1 and I also had a good pace in the afternoon with the hotter temperatures. I tried some different setting options and some different tyres and at the end, I did a good lap. It’s very positive to stay within the top3, even if it’s just Friday. At this track, the bike works very well, so you can push and it looks like our pace is not too bad on a used tyre. It’s still early on in the weekend, we still have to decide on different things – especially the tyres, but also the balance of the bike – but it was a good start”, he added.
A look at the combined times in #MotoGP at the end of day one#FrenchGP pic.twitter.com/JAgmexGJsd
— MotoGP™??? (@MotoGP) May 18, 2018
