Lorenzo battles to sixth after clash in first lap
Jorge Lorenzo delivered a true champion’s performance after being cause to crash on the first lap by Marco Simoncelli. Lorenzo quickly remounted and charged from the back of the pack through to claim an impressive sixth place finish and salvage valuable championship points from the unfortunate incident.
Lorenzo adds ten points to his championship tally and heads to Mugello next week with 108, 28 points behind leader Casey Stoner.
Jorge Lorenzo – Position 6th – Time +44.536
“Of course Simoncelli doesn’t want to throw me off the track, that wasn’t his intention but I think he is not very conscious about the risks in this class with these tyres. I thought he learnt from the past and the polemic he created with Dani but it’s clear he hasn’t learnt. The good thing is that we finished in sixth and took some points. I was fast with a good pace. The championship is now more difficult so we have to go all out to win races and go fast. We are making changes to the bike that are making it better with stability to brake harder and deeper so I think we can go to Mugello and be more competitive like Ben demonstrated today. I want to say a big congratulations to him for his first GP win and also thank you to all my guys who again worked really hard all weekend to give me a competitive bike.”
Wilco Zeelenberg – Yamaha Factory Racing Team Manager
“A very tough race, mixed feelings here as we are very disappointed by the action with Simoncelli, It was a racing accident but pretty stupid. I’m happy for Ben that we were able to win here for the 50th Anniversary race. It’s good to see we are able to win and it was also good to see Jorge picked up quickly and was able to do very good lap times so we know the speed was there. I know we would have been able to fight for the podium. I have to congratulate Ben he did a great job this weekend and I feel sorry for Jorge as he didn’t deserve this result.”
Massimo Meregalli – Yamaha Factory Racing Team Director
“I’m very disappointed for Jorge, it was clear the crash was not his fault. He showed his true colours as a world class racer with the way he rode following the incident. We leave Assen with a day of highs and lows and head to Mugello with even more confidence that we have made another step in our package and can challenge for more victories.”
Source: Yamaha Racing