Dovizioso on Petrucci help: It’s unusual

Andrea Dovizioso has talked up the harmonious atmosphere in Ducati’s garage for 2019 after he and Danilo Petrucci helped one another during a ten-lap run in the second day of MotoGP testing at Sepang.

Dovizioso admitted his tactic – to exit pit lane with his team-mate in the late afternoon before leading him around the length Sepang track in a high-speed chase – was “unusual”, but one that is already bearing fruit.

“I think it’s unusual what we are doing now,” began Dovizioso, fourth fastest at the end of day two. “It was not unusual what we did with Jorge, or some other riders. I think we have a good relation.

“I think it’s better for him to work with me. And I think I can learn something also with him. Everybody have a different characteristic and nobody is better everywhere.

“So I can learn from Danilo because I think he have a better potential than what almost everybody think. He’s a really strong rider.

“He doesn’t have some experience like the rider wants. He grew up in a different way that us in terms of the championship, the teams he raced for, it’s a different story. But I think he has a lot of potential.

“I don’t think it’s too important for the feedback. I think it’s important to create the condition to understand and give the feedback. What we created today when we did the long run, alone I couldn’t.

“That makes the difference – not his feedback from the bike, which is always important. But that is the point.

“We split ten [laps and] ten. It was good. We don’t have any comparisons because nobody [else] did [it]. We can’t know how fast we were. I mean, the speed was really good, if we look at the race, we were much faster.

“But I think the conditions are for sure better - I don’t know how much, but for sure better. The important thing was the speed from the fastest lap to the last lap and what came out, the feeling we had during the simulation was very important to the engineer. In those conditions you are very close to the race.”