After two excellent podiums at Motegi and Sepang, Andrea Dovizioso who despite struggling during this weekend at Phillip Island was off the starting line from ninth to fifth on the first lap, but on the third lap went wide and fell back to last place and after trying to manhandle his Honda on track, decided to pit.
Honda techs discovered that the steering damper mounting on his RC212V had moved, making steering and controlling virtually impossibile for the Italian.
“It’s really a pity that I had to retire today because we had worked hard with team and, after two difficult days of practice, today we had the pace to fight for third position and a podium finish.
I made a good start and I was able to recover some positions.
On the first lap I did a 1m31.
7s without pushing too hard and I was fifth across the line.
In the first two laps though I felt the steering was stiff and on lap three this caused me to lose a lot of positions.
I could control the bike but, although I completed another lap, it was too risky to keep riding and I had to come into the pits.
There was a problem at the steering damper mounting – it had moved into an incorrect position, so now we will investigate the causes.
I’m really disappointed because after two great races in Japan and Malaysia, it was important to make a good race here to fight for third position in the championship.
Still, now we will look to get the best results possible in Estoril and Valencia.
” Honda may have the better engine life this season compared to the other marques, but they’ve also had problems that have cost Dani Pedrosa twice.
The first problem was at Jerez, when Pedrosa was dominating the race and a sensor on his ECU unit went on the glitch, cutting the power on his bike believing that he was running out of gas and then the fly-by-wire throttle electronic malfunction that caused the Spaniard to crash at Motegi and now the unusal steering damper problem on Dovizioso’s bike.
