An 11th place finish on day-one of Mandalika MotoGP is as close as Dovizioso has come to any top ten appearanc﷽꧟e this season. 

With just over two♐ minutes remaining of an enthralling FP2 session, Dovizioso managed to slot into fifth place behind factory Yamaha riders Fabio Quart♋araro and Franco Morbidelli, who ended the day 1-2.

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However, a series of late time attacks saw the RNF Yamaha rider pushed out of the top ten by nearly two tenths, leaving the experienced �🔯�Italian to confess that the amount of work needed to extract the performance wanted is proving mightily difficult. 

The Italian said: "I still have to work a lot on learning how to ride the bike the correct w♉ay and until I manage to do that correctly, I have to basically put in double the amount of work. 

"I still need some improvement and especially, when the grip is like this. I did a different str🌊ategy and started with the soft tyre, but it didn’t work. 

"I managed to do some laps behind Franky (Morbidelli), which w🥃as very important to see how the bike is ridden correctly. 

"The condition of the track was a bit ꦇbetter than during the test, there is still a line and you have to be really careful, when you leave it. This is going♑ to be difficult for the race."

For team-mate Darryn Binder, the South Afric🀅an once again found himself towards the back of the field as only Luca Marini finished behind him. 

With limited experience, not 👍only on MotoGP machinery, but also on wet tyres, Binder ♈alluded to struggling for confidence in the tricky conditions. 

"This morning was quite difficult," said Binder. "The condiꦐtions have been a bit mixed at the beginning of the session. I did a couple of laps on the wets, stopped, put in the slicks, but I just struggled to gain enough 🍸confidence to cross the wet patches. 

"With t♐h൲is big bike and so much power every time you touch the wet patches and it moves, I get a little bit nervous, so I struggled to get comfortable this morning. 

"Anyway, it was a learning experience nonetheless. FP2 was quite good. We really🥀 tried to improve a lot. 

"I felt quite good and felt that the tyres are different from the test. The grip on thꦛe tyre seems to be less than what we had at the test. 

"So I was just really trying to understand that and trying to make changes to improve. I have a better understanding now after FP2 and I think we can work on some things for tomorr💯ow. 

"I still need to leܫarn how to really push 100% on the first lap with a new tyre to get the absolute maximum. Overall, I’m quite happy with how things went. Hopefully we can improve tomorrow if the weather stays stable."