Definitely, Andrea Dovizioso is in the form of his career.
After winning the Italian MotoGP Grand Prix at Mugello last week, today June 11, 2017 he has achieved a back-to-back victory on the track of the Catalunya MotoGP Grand Prix circuit at Montmeló, prevailing in the box over Marc Márquez and Dani Pedrosa, reducing the distance to Maverick Viñales (first in the General Standing) to only 7 points and strengthening his runner-up position within it.
Desmodovi has made a great race in which he has proved to be one of the greatest challengers to attain the World Championship of MotoGP, with a formidable display of his Ducati Desmosedici GP17 tuned up by Gigi Dall´Igna and the Ducati Corse Team, which has clearly beaten the Hondas RC213V bikes ridden by Marc Márquez and Dani Pedrosa (whom Dovizioso overtook with authority to eventually take the checquered flag), who finished second and third.
In spite of beginning seventh in the starting grid (he wasn´t among the best during the tests on Friday and Saturday), the rider from Forli, taking advantage of his experience and seamless adaptation to his bike, made a masterful management of the degradation of the tyres in his machine ( a real feat of forethought and perseverance, since he couldn´t ride at a good pace during the first laps and found extremely difficult to go fast), because it dawned on the Italian rider that the 54º temperature of the tarmac would result in a lack of grip and a harsh degradation of the wheels, so he did his best to save efforts and draw the full potential of the desmodromic engine of his Ducati Desmosedici GP17 at the decisive moments, outperforming Marc Márquez and building a gap over him, with a difference of 0.9 s when there were five laps to go, which increased up to 2.4 seconds with one lap to go and was of 3.544 s on crossing the finish line.
As a matter of fact, Desmodovi didn´t run full blast during the nine laps in which he went behind Dani Pedrosa, studying him and waiting for the best moment to attack, so when the key stage of the race arrived, he overtook the Honda nº 26 rider at the most suitable place and in an spectacular way (with nine laps to go, flying him past, making the most of his bike liquid-cooled, 90º V4 4-stroke with 16 valve desmodromic DOHC engine delivering 290 hp and top 20,000 rpm, by far the benchmark powerplant of the competition, particularly throughout the nine last laps of the race, where he ran at a top speed of 340 km/h, dumbfounding the audience on the stands and significantly improving his performance in comparison to the previous two thirds of race.
Another major side has been the accurate choice of tyres fulfilled by Dovizioso (a hard front one and a medium one behind), whose strategy and performance has been phenomenal, bearing in mind the very hard race conditions of the Montmeló circuit, which entailed a high probability of breaking tires for any rider trying to push the boundaries.
The Italian rider has known to be constant and avoid degrading the tyres, doing fifteen laps without forcing the breaking, recovering ground in the accelerations, which has enabled him to minimally wear away the front wheel
On the other hand, though not being among the first three riders in the box at the end of the race, Jorge Lorenzo (who had taken the lead from Pedrosa during the first laps, until being overtaken by Marc Márquez and later on being surpassed by Pedrosa again) managed to overcome the eighth position he had fallen because of tire problems and could finally regain lost ground after the tires started to work better, until getting the fourth place.
It has also a very good race for the French rider Johann Zarco (true rookie of the year probably a prospectable cahllenger for the title within a few years) who got the fifth position and the German rider Jonas Folger who was sixth and is the only rider having scored points in each and every of the six MotoGP 2017 races held till now.
The upshot of it all is that Gigi Dall´Igna project to make Ducati return to the top of the MotoGP World Championship and try to win it is paying off, with a Ducati Corse Team whose engineering, mechanical, telemetry and aerodynamics minds are working like a charm with hard work, humbleness and passion as a bedrock, and what began three years ago with the Ducati Desmosecidi GP15, the first offspring of the new Ducati MotoGP bike breed, is enabling the Borgo Panigale firm to win races, becoming a real challenger for the title if circumstances are adequate.
José Manuel Serrano Esparza
