Ducati Team riders Andrea Dovizioso and Cal Crutchlow took fifth and seventh place respectively at the end of the first day of free practice action for Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island.

Despite blue skies and bright sunshine, air temperature today only hovered around a lowly 15°C and together with a light sea breeze, this meant that all the riders who took to the track had problems with grip.

There were a number of crashes in the second session in particular, luckily without any consequences for the riders involved, and Andrea Dovizioso was one of those, when he crashed out at Turn 11 after losing the front of his Desmosedici GP14.2.

Twelve riders are separated by one second in the combined standings, with the two Ducati Pramac Racing Team men, Andrea Iannone and Yonny Hernandez, in fourth and ninth place respectively.


Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04) – 5th (1’29.945)

“For the moment I don’t have much of a feeling with my bike, but the track conditions today were a bit strange and there wasn’t really much grip. Many riders, me included at Turn 11, crashed when we lost the front because today the air temperature was rather cold and the right side of the tyre did not reach the correct temperature. It’s also very difficult to control the rear tyre and I don’t know if tomorrow, even if the temperature goes up, the situation will be much better. In the end I managed to set a good time, but for sure we’re going to have to do some more work to improve the feeling with the bike.”

Cal Crutchlow (Ducati Team #35) – 7th (1’30.076)

“It wasn’t too bad a day for us and I’m quite pleased. I believe we have not such a bad pace but the times are very close between a lot of the riders here. I was disappointed with the last run because I got held up for most of the laps and then didn’t better my time as much as possible. But I look forward to making some progress tomorrow and hopefully having a good qualifying session. Today I also used the asymmetric tyre but with the wind chill factor at the moment the left hand side is not building up enough heat.”

.