Malaysian GP polesitter Dovizioso thought he'd got qualifying wrong

Dovizioso claimed his second pole position of the MotoGP season at Sepang on Saturday, beating Yamaha's Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo on a drying surface.

The Italian set two laps that were good enough for pole, and they bookended a session in which he was the only rider in the top five to visit pitlane to change tyres.

Having started on the soft rear-rain tyre, Dovizioso felt he was vulnerable and ultimately uncomfortable, opting to sacrifice track time during the 15 minutes to pit and have the harder compound fitted.

"My strategy was to not stop, and to do qualifying with the soft," he said.

"But I knew almost everybody had the hard, so I thought maybe my strategy was wrong.

"I was able to make a really good lap time, in the first lap - I didn't push 100% but I felt on [corner] entry the movement was too much.

"I decided to come into the box too late, because I didn't use the shortcut [in the third sector to the back of the pits], and that gave me the possibility just to make two fast laps with the hard tyre.

"The first one, I wasn't able to improve the lap time, but the second one was enough to keep pole position.

"We changed the strategy during qualifying and it worked. I was able to make the lap time with the soft rear and the hard."

While Dovizioso was sidelined, his advantage at the top was cut from 1.624 seconds to 0.276s.

Rossi improved after the chequered flag again, but Dovizioso had already lowered his benchmark to finish 0.246s clear.

Dovizioso has been viewed as the most-likely ninth different winner this MotoGP season entering recent gands prix, as he chases a maiden Ducati victory.

While he was seventh-fastest in Saturday morning's dry session, he is hoping for clear conditions on Sunday.

"I hope tomorrow in the warm-up it's dry to try to improve feeling with the bike," he said.

"Nobody really wants to race in the wet, but if it happens we are competitive, so we'll see."

Dovizioso's Ducati team-mate Andrea Iannone qualified sixth on his return from injury.