The Gran Premio Cinzano di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini was a vital weekend for Andrea Dovizioso, with the talented youngster being announced as a Repsol Honda competitor for next season prior to Sunday’s race, amongst a capacity crowd of passionate Italians.

Dovizioso’s home town of Forli is only a one hour drive from the Misano track and he had ample family and friends cheering him on from the stands as he challenged with another popular Italian hero in the remaining laps, eventually placing fourth by outdoing the veteran Suzuki racer on the last lap by only two-tenths of a second.

Dovizioso had worked hard over the weekend to use his fresh Ohlins suspension system onto the factory RC212V, showing that he was not racing at 100% until the event itself, having placed down in eighth spot.

Dovizioso has finished fourth now on six seperate occasions this season, thrice in the prior three events, however this time the placing was good enough to take him above Colin Edwards in the rankings to fifth spot overall.

Concluding his home event, Dovizioso says, “I’m reasonably happy with this weekend. This was the first time with Ohlins and of course we couldn’t have the perfect set-up but this is just the start and I’m very confident for the future. I’m happy too because I renewed my contract with Honda. This is my first year in the factory Honda team and I feel that I still haven’t shown my full potential. I know the machine better now and we are working together in preparation for next year.”

On the race, he adds, “I pushed 100 per cent in the first laps. I had a good feeling with the bike but unfortunately on lap seven I made a mistake at turn 11 and I lost contact with the front riders. This mistake compromised the race as after that I couldn’t stay with the leaders. In the last laps I had quite a battle with Capirossi for fourth place. He was braking very hard but in the end I passed him and closed every gap so that he couldn’t get past again.”