Jorge Lorenzo takes commanding victory at Aragon

Movistar Yamaha MotoGP team‘s Jorge Lorenzo was on another level today at the Gran Premio Movistar de Aragón and took a stunning victory whilst teammate Valentino Rossi had the Spanish crowd at MotorLand Aragón gasping for air as he entertained them with a sensational battle for second place in which he came just 0.090s short.

Lorenzo made a flying start from second on the grid to lead the MotoGP field into turn one with rival Marc Marquez in pursuit. The Yamaha rider showed his usual stunning pace on the opening lap, creating an advantage of over half a second as they headed into the second lap. Marquez tried to stay on the heels of Lorenzo, but was unable to keep up with his blistering pace and with 22 laps to go he crashed out.

By then Lorenzo already had a more than 1.7s advantage over the chasing group fighting for second, including Andrea Iannone, Dani Pedrosa and Valentino Rossi.

As they duelled, Lorenzo in no time built up a margin of over three seconds, which he managed beautifully. It was a lonely race for the Spaniard, but his incredible consistency proved unbeatable today.

With no rider able to match his pace, Lorenzo crossed the finish line with a convincing 2.683 seconds advantage over the rider in second place, and clinched the by himself designed Gran Premio Movistar de Aragón trophy.

Today‘s race results keep Lorenzo in second in the rankings and see him inch closer to his teammate Rossi, who holds the lead in the standings with a 14-point advantage and a total of 263 points.

JORGE LORENZO
“I took a big sigh of relief, because I was pushing so much and my tension-level was very high. I was trying to pull away by some metres from Marquez. I knew it was going to be difficult because my pace was very similar to his and after the warm up I knew his pace was very strong. We probably would have fought all the race and he may have beaten me in the final part because he may not have noticed the drop of the tyres as much, but today I was lucky. I saw his crash on the board and then I had to wait another lap to see the gap to Pedrosa. That was already very big after two laps, but I still couldn‘t relax because I knew that Dani had Valentino behind him and on this track he can have a good pace. I needed to stay focused and not make any mistakes to maintain the distance and that‘s what I did all the race. I remained very concentrated and focused and it was worth it. This race was very important to forget about the last two races with bad luck concerning the weather and where I made some mistakes. Had I lost more points to Valentino, it would have been almost impossible to win the championship. Now it‘s a bigger chance, but you never know what happens at the three fly-away races, so we have to keep our feet on the ground and keep working well as we are doing now and try to beat the others on all laps of these next four races. Over the last two years we did a good job in Motegi, the bike works well there in what is usually a difficult track for us. The hard-braking and acceleration suits our rivals better, so it‘s not easy, but these last few years I‘ve been very fast and competitive. Maybe we can win, but for sure, with Marquez around it will be very tough.
I‘m very proud of the team and very proud of the work that everyone from Yamaha did in Japan. They worked on all aspects but especially on corner entry. That was our main weakness over the previous years. This Team World Championship title, that we secured already four races before the end of the season, means a lot to us. It‘s been an unbelievable year from the results to the performance of the bike and we are very happy.”