Ever the realist, An꧑drea Dovizioso surely never imagined he would leave Austin leading the MotoGP World Championship.

The Ducati star was starting a lowly 13th on the grid, while title leader Marc Marquez looked firmly o🐈n course for a seventh successiv🅰e COTA win as he converted pole position to an early lead.

B🌃ut the Honda rider's shock mistake, combined with a strong fightback to fourth by Dovizioso means the Italian is back at the head of the riders' standings for the start of the European season at Jerez this weekend.

Not only that, but﷽ Ducati is also leading the constructors' and teams' championships.

However, on paper, Jerez is one of the last venues Dovizioso would pick to try and defend his early points advantage, having never 🐓finished on the Jerez podium in the premier-class.

But he was in rostrum contention last season until being caught up in a spectacular clash between team-mate Jorge🌞 Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa, and lapped 0.347s from the fastest time (albeit onl🐟y good enough for eighth) during November's test.

"We arrive at Jerez in the lead but, more than for the championship position itself, I'm happy first and foremost for the feeling with the bike so far this year," said Dovizioso,&nbs𓆏p;who will start his 200th MotoGP race on 🐠Sunday.

"Our competitiveness has further increased and we managed to defend ours🔥elves even on historically difficult tracks, but it's also true that there are𒐪 even more riders capable of fighting for the podium and the season has just started.

"I believe that in Jerez we'll♕ be able to be stronger than in the past, last year during the race we had already shown progress, but we need to keep our head down and work hard to make more improvements and to be contenders on every single track."

Team-mate Danilo Petrucci is fifth in the world championship, with fifth places in 🔜every race so far this year.

Last year's provided one of the biggest talking points of the 2018 season!

Here's the incident which took , and o𓄧ut of the race!

— MotoGP (@MotoGP)