Dovizioso, Hayden eighth and tenth in free practice at Aragón

Riding in the dry, hot conditions that are common to the area around MotorLand Aragón, the MotoGP riders kicked off the season’s fourteenth round and its third Grand Prix on Spanish soil by completing the first two free-practice sessions of the race weekend.

Nicky Hayden, Ducati Team

Photo by: Ducati Corse

By day’s end, Andrea Dovizioso and Nicky Hayden had turned the eighth and tenth fastest laps, respectively, in the combined times, the Italian 1.047 seconds off of leader Marc Marquez and his Ducati Team cohort a further .412 seconds back.

For tomorrow, Dovizioso expects to focus on his Desmosedici GP13’s setup for the soft tyre, whereas Hayden will work on improving corner entry.

Andrea Dovizioso - Ducati Team, 8th (1:50.034): “We wanted to try the hard tyre, but as there’s a one-second difference, it’s not worth considering at the moment. Tomorrow morning we’ll continue working because although the time isn’t bad, it’s still a second off the leaders.

The others used the soft tyre the whole session, whereas I only put it on at the end and only had one good lap with it. I think the gap here at Aragón is in line with the other tracks.”

Nicky Hayden - Ducati Team, 10th (1:50.446): “In the morning, we weren’t quite as far back as we’ve been at other tracks, which is good considering that we didn’t test here when the other manufacturers did. Since then, we haven’t made a lot of progress, as I’m not very comfortable on corner entry.

I can’t get enough feel from the front to really find my limit, and I ran wide a couple of times, including once this afternoon on a good lap. That’s where our main focus is, so we’ll concentrate on that tonight and see what we can do tomorrow.”

Ducati Team