Source: Supplied.

It was a difficult weekend for Ducati Team’s Andrea Doviziozo, who has labelled his 13th place performance at Phillip Island’s 16th round of the MotoGP World Championship as a big disappointment.

The Italian ace evidently struggled all weekend, qualifying in 11th before pushing through in the challenging 27-lap affair, being pipped at the line by Scott Redding (Pramac Ducati) and Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda) to finish outside of the top 10.

Dovizioso, who now sits 33 points down on championship leader Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda), says it’s a pity because he’d like to be closer to the multi-time champ at this point of the season.

“Today’s race was a big disappointment and we really lost a lot of points in the championship,” Dovizioso expressed. “For sure my mistake in the early stages of the race complicated things and maybe even the choice of rear tyre was not the best one, but on this track our bike is still struggling a lot.

“This year we’ve managed to improve many aspects and be competitive throughout the season but when you come to tracks like this, where you don’t brake very much and where there are lots of long fast corners, some of our limits are magnified: in fact here at Phillip Island none of the Ducati were very quick.

“Pity, because at this point of the season it would have been better to be closer to Marquez in the standings, but now we have to think of Malaysia, where quite simply we’ll have to give it our all.”

The MotoGP World Championship heads to Malaysia this weekend for the penultimate stop, while the series will wrap up next month in Valencia, Spain, on 12 November.