The Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team's home race at the legendary Le Mans circuit in France kicked off in positive fashion today, with Andrea Dovizioso and Cal Crutchlow posting competitive times on the opening day of MotoGP practice.

Italian Dovizioso made an impressive start to the Monster Energy Grand Prix de France when a lap of 1.35.065 placed him third on the timesheets in this morning's opening session. Concentrating on improving grip in cool and cloudy conditions and working on tyre endurance, Dovizioso was able to knock almost 0.5s off his time in this afternoon's second session and his quickest lap of 1.34.585 secured him a place inside the top six on combined times.

Crutchlow also enjoyed a satisfactory start to the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team's home event and the 26-year-old was only 0.025s behind Dovizioso in seventh position on the combined timesheets.

Andrea Dovizioso 6th 1.34.585 – 43 laps

“I am very happy because the dry conditions meant we could concentrate on working on the set-up of the bike and my feeling has improved a lot with the Yamaha. I was third fastest this morning but I did two good practice sessions working a lot on the race set-up of the bike, particularly with the endurance of the Bridgestone tyres. My best lap time came with 23 laps on the rear tyre, so this is very positive and shows that my pace for the race is not bad at all.”

Cal Crutchlow 7th 1.34.610 – 41 laps

“We have a couple of small problems but nothing that I don't think we can fix ahead of the race. I can't get the bike to turn into the corner as I'd like and I'm losing a little bit of time in that area. We will have a sit down tonight and see if we can come up with a set-up that will improve the turning.”

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