Why Marquez’s toughest MotoGP foe is stopping at the right time

Andrea Dovizioso’s 2023 future has been a point of question since MotoGP went on its five-week summer break following the Dutch Grand Prix. Several times in the first half of the season, the veteran Italian indicated that next year’s grid wasn’t likely to feature him.

It’s for this reason that this writer organised to sit down with Dovizioso on Thursday afternoon at Silverstone. That interview was postponed at the eleventh hour, the reasoning becoming clear at midday on Thursday when Yamaha dropped a press release announcing Dovizioso’s retirement.

Curiously, it said he would be stepping away after the San Marino GP in just two races’ time to be replaced by Yamaha test rider Cal Crutchlow. Most bow out at the end of a campaign, making their decision in good time to savour the rest of what’s become their farewell season. Dovizioso is doing things differently, but that has generally been his style in the premier class.

His success story is something of an unlikely one. A world champion at 125cc level in 2004 and twice a runner-up in the 250cc class in 2006 and 2007, Dovizioso stepped up to MotoGP in 2008 with the Scot Racing Team. But for someone who showed as much promise as Dovizioso did in the junior categories, his MotoGP career merely plodded along at first.

Between 2008 and 2015, he won just one grand prix - that coming at Donington in 2009 with Repsol Honda – as he generally played second, and then third, fiddle within the Honda stable through to the end of 2011. When Honda was forced to scale back its factory squad entry from three to two for 2012, Dovizioso was deemed surplus to requirements and forced to join satellite Yamaha squad Tech3.

Scoring six podiums that year in an era where satellite teams barely got a look in, he earned a factory return with Ducati in 2013 to pick up the pieces of the marque’s failed marriage with Valentino Rossi from the previous two years. And it was a difficult slog, Dovizioso scoring no podiums in 2013 and just two in 2014.

Dovizioso celebrates his maiden MotoGP win back in 2009 at the British GP

Photo by: Repsol Media

It started to click in 2015 and he scored five podiums, but his future looked uncertain as a young gun in Andrea Iannone looked like he would ultimately be the favoured option for Ducati for 2017 as it courted Jorge Lorenzo. But Iannone’s inability to contain his on-track aggression would be to his detriment, and Dovizioso was given a stay.

He repaid Ducati (or made it look foolish, depending on your outlook) as, having won a second career race at Sepang in 2016, he won six times in 2017 while Lorenzo managed just three podiums and fought Marc Marquez all the way to the end for the title. He ended the year as runner-up, doing so again in 2018 and 2019.

But clashes with Ducati’s general manager Gigi Dall’Igna meant his time at the marque would come to an end at the conclusion of 2020, with Dovizioso electing to take a sabbatical instead of joining Aprilia for 2021. A race seat with Yamaha at Petronas SRT, which then morphed into RNF Racing for 2022, from the San Marino GP last year brought him back – but not the results.

"I really didn’t expect to find this characteristic of the bike, because I already had experience with the Yamaha. But the point is the championship changed, the rules changed, the bike changed, the competitors changed and what I found is quite unique" Andrea Dovizioso

“One moment no, but there were a lot of moments where I was thinking about this because I try a lot of things,” Dovizioso tells Autosport when we finally sit down with him following his retirement announcement and ask him if there was one single point this season that made up his mind.

“I’m quite rational, I know what I’m doing. I think I know why I’m not that fast, because the mix between me and the characteristic of the bike is not perfect in this moment. This was clear. So, after I was trying to change the set-up and the way to ride. I couldn’t achieve that, and that was clear. So, after that I was starting to think about [retiring] and that’s why I arrived at that decision.”

Dovizioso has scored a grand total of just 22 points on his return to Yamaha since last September. While he has explained at length this year why he has struggled so much on the same factory M1 Fabio Quartararo won the championship with last year and leads the standings with this year, the basic explanation is this: Dovizioso’s riding style is at total odds to how the current Yamaha package needs to be ridden to be competitive.

Since returning to Yamaha machinery Dovizioso hasn't been able to gel with the M1

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Quartararo has mastered this by utilising the strong front-end of the bike. Dovizioso, known for his hard braking ability and used to squaring off corners to maximise acceleration – the key factors in making a Ducati go quickly – has continually hit a brick wall, as the Yamaha now struggles with a lack of rear grip. But the struggles he has faced have come as a surprise, having quickly adapted to a Yamaha back in 2012 when he came from Honda.

“I really didn’t expect to find this characteristic of the bike, because I already had experience with the Yamaha,” Dovizioso admits. “So, I didn’t find a completely different bike. But the point is the championship changed, the rules changed, the bike changed, the competitors changed and what I found is quite unique.

“And in this situation we are living now in MotoGP, that characteristic is very extreme. Just in the way Fabio is riding you can be that competitive. So, I didn’t expect this extreme characteristic.”

This latter point is pertinent. Dovizioso took a break right at the point where MotoGP’s competitive order really blew open, with the likes of Aprilia emerging strongly. He was also thrown off by Michelin’s change to a softer rear tyre carcass, which hampered him in 2020, while the advent of multiple ride height devices and the impact this has had on riding happened in earnest while he was on the sidelines.

With the differences in laptimes so small now and the subsequent dearth you can find yourself in for the sake of a couple of tenths, trying to completely adapt your riding style to a very particular bike is a task Dovizioso says is “impossible”.

“No one can do it,” he explains. “You can adapt a bit to the characteristics of the bike. Every rider on top level can adapt a bit, [but] can’t change completely the DNA of your way to ride, because it’s too extreme the level, everybody is fast.

“So, if you try to do a competitive riding style or way to approach the track like a competitor who is really good, you will never be good like him. You can be close, but never be good. You are good in some areas, everybody has something good, so with some bikes you can use more that or less, but you can’t completely change it.”

A complete change in his riding style needed to get the best from the Yamaha is something Dovizioso believes will not be possible

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Dovizioso added that, in the case of the Yamaha, the characteristics both good and negative lie at opposite ends to each other now – hence why only a certain type of rider, in this case Quartararo, can make the difference.

That Dovizioso’s career will end on this note should not have an impact on the legacy he will leave behind. For starters, he is so far the only rider that was able to give six-time MotoGP world champion Marquez a run for his money in a title race, and on a number of occasions beat him in head-to-head combat on track.

That impact on the grid also extends wider. Currently there are eight Ducatis on the grid and it is considered one of the best-all round packages, with both 2021 and 2022-spec versions of the Desmosedici winning races this season. All of that can be traced back to the years of toil Dovizioso went through between 2013 and 2020 transforming Ducati into a frontrunning force. Reflecting on all of it, Dovizioso is content.

"When I’m saying something I believe in it, and not saying what the people want to hear, just I’m saying what I believe. If you look at my results, I didn’t win like some other riders, but if you look my final results at championship level is quite good" Andrea Dovizioso

“I mean every rider wants more and everybody can’t be happy enough with what you did, it’s normal,” he says. “It has to be like this because you have, and you want, to achieve more and more, it’s never enough, so you can’t be happy 100%.

“But at the end, you have to be more realistic, and for sure I am happy, I have to be happy, because I was able to create something important with Ducati and that remains forever. Every time I see the fans, I can see from their eyes I did something important in those battles. So that’s really nice and I think is very important for a rider.”

Dovizioso is aware he won’t be held in the same breath as someone like Marquez or Valentino Rossi as time moves on. But for him, he hopes he is remembered by fans and the paddock as being something few stars are: honest.

“Like I am,” he responds when asked how he would like to be remembered. “I’m very relaxed, I’m not a showman, I’m a person when I’m saying something I believe in it, and not saying what the people want to hear, just I’m saying what I believe. If you look at my results, I didn’t win like some other riders, but if you look my final results at championship level is quite good.

“So, at the end, anything I was doing, I didn’t make that with a big confusion. But at the end, if you look at the results, it was always there. So, I think the team and the manufacturers always believed in my final result.”

Dovizioso has remained an honest and open figure in MotoGP throughout his career, including in his retirement announcement

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

It’s that humble nature that has ultimately led to his decision to not see out the rest of the season. Dovizioso has not enjoyed his riding for a long time and there is no way to make the Yamaha competitive for him. Thus, risking your life in a dangerous sport to simply count down the clock is senseless.

And so Dovizioso is going out on his own terms, making his farewell to MotoGP in front of his home fans and surrounded by his loved ones. That’s a fitting conclusion to the career of a rider who played a significant role in the modern era of MotoGP.

MotoGP will be a poorer place without Dovizioso. He is one of the few riders who offered genuine detail in his media debriefs on any topic put to him, and always seemed a balanced perspective on any situation. And when this very interview was postponed again due to a clash with the riders’ safety commission on Friday evening, Dovizioso himself apologised for the delay.

His Yamaha return may not have offered up the results expected by both rider and team. But the last year should in no way define Andrea Dovizioso’s time in MotoGP.

Dovizioso has three more MotoGP races before he bows out at Misano

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images