Following the opening round of the season in the Qatar desert, the Ducati Team is set to arrive in the United States for the first of two rounds this year on US soil. The second event in the 2014 MotoGP championship season will be taking place this weekend at the ultra-modern Circuit of the Americas, the Austin (Texas) track that joined the MotoGP calendar twelve months ago.
The two Ducati Team riders began the MotoGP season at Losail with a fifth and a sixth place. Andrea Dovizioso and Cal Crutchlow then took part in a two-day test last week at Jerez and, in spite of the bad weather, they were able to verify that the ‘full-factory’ electronics fitted to their Desmosedici GP14 after the Qatar round were working correctly.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team #04)
“We have to be happy and positive about the fact that we reduced the gap to the leaders by half in Qatar and confirmed the improvements we made in the tests. We know we’ve still got a long way to go however to be competitive and I think that some of the next few tracks will be difficult for us this year, starting with Austin, but that track is so nice and I am really looking forward to racing there again this weekend.”
Cal Crutchlow (Ducati Team #35)
“We are looking forward to the race at Austin, because it was a track I did well at last year. I’d never even tested there and we finished strong with a fourth place, so I’m really looking forward to riding the GP14 on this track. The guys worked 100% in Qatar after my crashes, I gave them a little bit of work to do! It was a disappointing race because of the electronics problem that we had, but it was good that we finished the race in sixth.”
Ducati Press Release
