Andrea was born in Forlimpopoli, on Italy's Via Emilia, on 23 March 1986, and his passion for motorcycles started when, as a young boy, he watched his father race motocross at weekends. The young Dovizioso dreamed of having a motorcycle of his own, and after he learned to ride his bicycle without training wheels, his dad surprised him with a minibike. Andrea was just 4 years old.
Two years later the boy received his first mini road racer, and by the time he was seven, he was racing on both asphalt and dirt. That continued for the next seven years, and Dovizioso was always competitive, winning the 1997 and '98 Italian mini road racing titles. He also proved to be quite adept at football, but his passion for bikes soon won out.

The 2000 season saw Andrea move up to a 125cc machine in the Aprilia Challenge, and he immediately earned the class crown. The following year, Dovizioso added the European 125cc championship to his shelf, thanks in part to a pair of wins in Hungary and a third in the Czech Republic. It was a busy season for Andrea, who also earned fourth place in the Italian Championship and even entered his first Grand Prix, in Italy.
In 2002, Andrea moved into Grand Prix racing fulltime, racing a Honda for the Cirano Mularoni-led Scot team, marking the beginning of a long and successful relationship.
The 16-year-old posted four top-ten finishes, ending the season sixteenth in the final standings of the 125cc class.
The Italian continued with the team in 2003, and the second race of the year, in South Africa, saw him take a big step forward, qualifying on the front row and achieving his first Grand Prix podium finish-a runner-up result. His first Grand Prix pole position came two races later, in France, where he also finished the race in third place. An additional pair of podiums, in Great Britain and Japan, helped Dovi to an eventual fifthplace finish that year.
Dovizioso's progress continued in 2004, a year that he kicked off with his debut Grand Prix victory, in South Africa. That was followed by additional wins in France, Great Britain, Japan, and Australia, plus he also managed six additional podium finishes and eight pole positions, resulting in the 125cc World Championship.

With that goal accomplished, Andrea decided it was time to move up to the 250cc class for 2005, which he did with the same private Honda team that had brought him so much success in the eighth-of-a-litre division. Dovi was successful immediately, earning five podium finishes and finishing third in the season.
Dovizioso's ascent continued in 2006, a season that saw him take his first 250cc victory (at the Catalan Grand Prix), a feat that he repeated at the penultimate race, in Portugal.
The steady Italian posted no fewer than eleven podium finishes during the year and earned his first two pole positions in the quarter-litre class, ending the season in a solid second place in the points standings.
Dovi matched that result in 2007, thanks in part to two more wins (in Turkey and Great Britain), plus an additional eight podium finishes and two pole positions.
Andrea had a good chance to try and earn another support-class world title in 2008, but instead he decided to challenge himself by taking the big step up to MotoGP! Once again, he was surrounded by the Scot Honda structure that had helped him for so many years, and he started his big-bike career with a very respectable fourth-place finish at the season opener, in Qatar. True to his reputation, he was steady and consistent the entire season, tallying nine top-five finishes (and taking his first MotoGP podium, in Sepang) to close his rookie year out in fifth place in the standings.
HRC was impressed by Andrea's results and promoted him to the factory team for 2009. The British Grand Prix-a site of many Dovizioso successes earlier in his career-saw the Italian score his first MotoGP victory in wet conditions. At year's end, he was sixth in the overall standings.
The 2010 season saw him improve that ranking by one, as Dovizioso notched seven podium finishes (with three runner-up results) and earned his first-ever MotoGP pole position, in Japan.
The following season was Andrea's third with the factory Honda effort, and he had Daniel Pedrosa and Casey Stoner as teammates. Dovi was a reliable top-five finisher, achieving that feat on an impressive fifteen occasions (the only exceptions were Jerez, where he had to return to the garage for a new tyre, and Aragon, where he crashed out). That list included podium results in seven races, and Dovi was third overall, his best result in the premier class.

After ten years aboard Honda motorbikes, Dovizioso moved to the Tech3 Yamaha squad last year, when the MotoGP class switched from an 800cc displacement limit to 1,000cc. Teamed with Brit Cal Crutchlow, he continued to shine despite no longer being at the factory level. He scored a total of six third-place finishes and placed in the top five on fourteen occasions. Factor in a trio of front-row qualifying efforts, and his fourthplace finish in the final standings should be no surprise, and it was the best by a nonfactory
rider.

For 2013, Dovizioso takes an important step in his career, moving back to factory level with the Ducati Team, where he joins 2006 MotoGP World Champion Nicky Hayden for the first time, aboard the Desmosedici GP13.