The doctor who will operate on Andrea Dovizioso's broken collarbone says the injury appears serious and has warned the Italian to be careful on his return.
Dovizioso sustained the injury in a motocross fall on Thursday. Dr Giuseppe Porcellini, who operated on Valentino Rossi's 2010 shoulder injury, will carry out surgery today, with Dovizioso hoping to be fit for when MotoGP testing resumes in Malaysia on Jan. 31.
"I've seen a picture of the collarbone on the phone and it does look very displaced indeed with two fragments," Dr Porcellini told Gazzetta dello Sport. "We couldn't avoid surgery even if he was an office worker.
"We'll have to insert a plate and then I'll try to recommend Dovizioso to have at least 15 days of rest, in the hope that he'll then be able to go testing. In any case, he'll have to be careful: let's not forget that [Dani] Pedrosa last year underwent three collarbone surgeries."
Dovizioso said the incident was a relatively minor one that had large consequences.
"I came to Alghero to train. It was very windy and, between one hump and another, I lost the front," he told Gazzetta. "I was going very slowly, but because of the sandy surface, the wheel sank and I crashed forward. The bike fell on me and I broke my right collarbone."
He admitted it would be a significant blow if he was not fully fit in time for the first 2012 test, as he is still acclimatizing to new team Tech 3 and its Yamaha after moving from longtime employer Honda over the winter.
"I'm hopeful of being able to recover by the end of the month," said Dovizioso. "The Sepang test is very important. I want to be in the best possible condition in order to give the Yamaha engineers indications to develop the M1."