Fourth place start at Sepang for Jorge Lorenzo

Movistar Yamaha MotoGP‘s Jorge Lorenzo had a challenging outing in today’s Qualifying at Sepang and will start tomorrow’s Malaysian Grand Prix from second row.

It was a day with highs and lows for Lorenzo. The championship title chaser started the day by dipping under the 2‘00 mark in the morning‘s free practice with a time of 1’59.544s, but he had a minor slide down the track in the afternoon practice session.

Thankfully unhurt Lorenzo arrived at the Sepang qualifying session, opting for his usual three-stint qualifying strategy. He made sure he was one of the first riders for the 15-minute qualifying heat to be ensured of some clear space. He posted a 1‘59.737s lap to take provisional second place and immediately returned to the pits with more than nine and a half minutes to go.

He returned to the track less than a minute later and, having been pushed back to third, felt fired up to set another hot lap. However, he was unable to improve on his time and came back into the box to switch bike.

With two minutes of the session remaining he put the hammer down for a final time, but again came just a bit short to further improve on his time and finished the day in fourth place.

JORGE LORENZO
“In free practice four and qualifying we had big problems with the brakes, when I arrived at turn four I couldn‘t brake, the power of the brake arrived suddenly in the middle, but I wasn‘t able to brake on the first part and couldn‘t stop unless it was a very aggressive stop, that was the main problem this afternoon. In every braking section I‘m losing too much and I was unable to recover in acceleration what I lost on braking. It was a pity to lose the front row, but I think that if we solve this problem, we can be competitive for the race.”

Source: Yamaha Racing