The 2019 MotoGP World Championship has officially begun: the Mission Winnow Ducati team concludes the opening free-practice sessions in Qatar with Petrucci 4th and Dovizioso 6th

The Mission Winnow Ducati team resumed action today in Qatar at the Losail track, home of the opening round of the 2019 MotoGP World Championship, for the first free-practice sessions of the season. Both Danilo Petrucci and Andrea Dovizioso confirmed the competitiveness shown only a few days ago while testing on the track located on the outskirts of Doha, finishing in fourth and sixth position respectively in the combined time sheets. 

Fifth at the end of FP1, Petrucci took more than a second off his best lap time in FP2 – held at the same time scheduled for the race – to post a personal best in 1:54.053. Similarly to his teammate, Dovizioso improved by a second in FP2 to finish 0.203 behind his teammate in 1:54.256. 

Danilo Petrucci (#9 Mission Winnow Ducati) – 1:54.053 (4th)
"Today we worked on the details to prepare the race, and I'm quite happy with the feeling with the bike. Honestly, we could have been a bit faster on the flying lap towards the end of FP2, but I ran into some traffic and I couldn't be as precise as I would have liked. We're still not at our 100 percent: our rivals are pretty fast, so tomorrow we'll try to finalize the work done up to this point to make sure we start at the front and maintain a fast and consistent pace throughout the whole race."

Andrea Dovizioso (#04 Mission Winnow Ducati) – 1:54.256 (6th)
"I'm very happy because we managed to put together all the feedback gathered during the tests and come back to our usual levels of competitiveness. Track conditions were quite good today, as shown by the overall fast lap times, but the situation could still change come race time. At any rate, we're up there with our rivals and ready to put up a fight. That said, we still have room for improvement under some aspects. We need to analyze the data to optimize our strategy, especially in terms of tyre performance."

The Mission Winnow Ducati team will resume action tomorrow at 15:15 local time (CET +2) for FP3, while qualifying will take place from 20:00 to 20:40 local time.