The Ducati Team riders both had a positive start to their French Grand Prix weekend campaign at Le Mans. Andrea Iannone was second quickest at the end of today’s two free practice sessions, while his team-mate Andrea Dovizioso ended up in fifth place.

On a sunny day, with spring-like temperatures, the MotoGP field went out onto the track at 9.55 am for the first FP1 session, and the two factory Ducati riders immediately proved to have good pace, Dovizioso notching up the fourth quickest time with Iannone ending the session in sixth place.

In the afternoon run, all the riders improved their times considerably and, at the end of the session, Iannone had clocked a best time of 1’33.169, which put him into second place, around three-tenths of a second down on provisional polesitter Lorenzo.

Andrea Dovizioso was also on good form today, setting a time of 1’33.574 on the twenty-first and final lap of FP2 which earned him fifth place.

Andrea Iannone (Ducati Team #29) – 1’33.169 (2nd)

“This afternoon we managed to improve over the morning session after getting to grips with the behaviour of my Desmosedici GP and adapting it to the characteristics of this circuit. We’ve still got some work to do tomorrow in this direction, but for today I am quite satisfied. Regarding the tyres, this afternoon we also tried the new rear tyre that Michelin brought to Le Mans. The French manufacturer is proving to be very responsive because it wasn’t necessarily expected that it would immediately work better than the standard one. My bike still moves about a bit coming out of the corner and we still have some spinning, but the situation has improved a lot over Jerez and so now we have to continue to work to try and resolve these two problems.”

Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team # 04) – 1’33’.574 (5th)

“I am quite satisfied with this first day of track action, because we started off well and we were quite quick, even though maybe I had expected to go a bit quicker in the afternoon session. We also tried a new rear tyre, which modified my feeling with the bike a bit, but we need to continue to work on it to get to know it better. In any case I am convinced that we have room for improvement tomorrow and that our pace, apart from that of Lorenzo, is in line with the fastest riders.”