“A quite good start” for Lorenzo with second-fastest laptime on first day at Qatar

The long winter wait is finally over as the MotoGP grid took to the track this evening under the spectacular floodlights of the Losail circuit for the first session of the 2012 season. Yamaha Factory Racing riders Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies took up where they left off in winter testing, putting in quick, consistent competitive laps from the start. Texan Spies led for a good part of the session and was the first rider to break under the 1’57 second barrier. He finished the session in fourth, 0.508 seconds from top. Team mate Lorenzo was quick to follow, delivering a blistering 1’56.648 in the last minutes to wrap up in second just 0.174 seconds from first.

There was no dramatic changes to either riders bikes for this first session, the cobwebs were blown off and the base set up was assessed for the Losail circuit.

Jorge Lorenzo Position : 2nd Time: 1’56.648 Laps: 13
“A quite good start, the track seems pretty dirty though, we are very far from the lap times of last year but that’s the same for everybody. I feel good, we are in the top close to Casey and we have improvements to come tomorrow from the bike, the track and myself. At the end we made a small change to gain some rear grip on all the corners which helped drop the lap time.”

Wilco Zeelenberg, Team Manager
“That’s the first free practice done, P2 is quite good and we’re happy to be there just one tenth from Casey. It seems to be that what we’ve learnt and solved over the wintertime is working here. Jorge is riding very well, calm and relaxed and focused so I believe we can make some more steps forward when the track is a little cleaner and get faster. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.”

Massimo Meregalli, Team Director
“It’s definitely a good start for us. I think everything we saw in the winter tests meant we were confident we could come here and do well. We led the practice for a while and we had a very consistent pace and were able to put in fast laps with a used tyre. What a promising start, the base of the bike is really good as you can see with four Yamaha’s up there being competitive from the start.”

Source: Yamaha MotoGP