Andrea Dovizioso pushed hard at the eni Motorrad Grand Prix Deutschland on Sunday to battle for a possible fifth podium of the 2010 season, however the Repsol Honda competitor comments after his fifth place in the event that he and his squad just missed out on finding the right set-up, one that could have assured him a top three finish.

“I really gave it everything so of course I cannot be happy to finish fifth, especially after qualifying in fourth. I was simply not fast enough to stay with the top riders in the race and in fact I was riding very aggressively and maybe even overriding a little to try and stay with them. When you do this you use up the tyres quicker and also use more energy so I knew it wasn’t the right way, but I had to try to stay with the frontrunners.”

The 24 year old and his team tried to ascertain set up problems in the 25-minute break between the first red-flagged event and the second 21-lap race.

He adds, “This weekend we didn’t quite find the right electronics set-up and machine settings, and between the first and second parts of the race we tried to change some electronics settings because the set-up was not 100% in the first part. I was losing a lot in turn seven, turn 12 and on the straight because I didn’t have the perfect set-up to use all the potential of the bike.”

Dovizioso still keeps third place in the Championship rankings but is looking for improvement at the next round at the Red Bull US Grand Prix.

“Now I’m just looking forward to Laguna Seca and to getting right up front and being fully competitive again,” he says. “We were very fast last year. Unfortunately we crashed at the beginning but in practice we had a really good pace, so I am very confident about Laguna."