Andrea Dovizioso said that he is confident in securing a front row start at the Red Bull Ring ahead of tomorrow's MotoGP race.

The Italian, who won around the Austrian circuit twelve months ago, came into the weekend as favourite according to Marc Marquez. Despite getting piped to the pole position by the Spaniard by just 0.002 seconds, the Italian said he is confident with a front row start.

“I’m happy and we are very happy about the lap time we did in the qualifying. First row was the goal so, first, second and third is not a big difference,” said Dovizioso.

“I feel confident, today was a bit of a strange today, and especially in free practice four, and the conditions were strange. Maybe with a lot of water, there wasn’t the rubber on the asphalt and I didn’t feel so good, so I didn’t expect to be competitive in qualifying with this lap time.

“But overall at the end, the lap time come and I feel confident with the bike. The only thing is we’re going in the race with a lot of question marks about the choice of the tyres and the strategy for what we have to manage. I feel good; I think we are the riders who can fight for the victory and the podium. But we are very different so everything can happen in the race.”

Dovizioso won his first race since the opener last weekend in Brno in a strange race, which saw the front-runners lap very slowly for the first, half of the race. Dovi admitted he didn’t know if tomorrow's race would follow a similar pattern, but said that it has in previous years.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think you have to ask the other riders.

“Normally you have to save the tyre, you have to save a little bit of fuel it’s a long race here because it’s quite short. This is the normal strategy but that doesn’t mean it will be like this.”

Last weekend Dovizioso used a new frame, which helped him in Brno. After a further test on Monday there had been questions if he would continue to use the new frame for tomorrows race or revert back to the old one.

“I use the old one. We decided during the test in Brno, but the difference is almost zero,” said Dovizioso.

“There is small things for me and my riding style I decide that, but it didn’t affect us really, especially the speed. It’s more about other things.”