Difficult opening day at Rio Hondo for Jorge Lorenzo

Movistar Yamaha MotoGP rider Jorge Lorenzo was on track today at a sunny Termas de Río Hondo Circuit for the first free practice sessions. However, the day was overshadowed by a lack of grip, causing him to finish in fourteenth place respectively in the provisional overall free practice times.

Lorenzo had a cautious start on his first laps in the morning session as he tried to get a feel for the low-grip conditions. With his mind set on duplicating his performance at Qatar, he began to work on the setting and improved his time consistently until the end of FP1. His best time of 1’44.742s left him 12th in the morning standings.

As the conditions heated up even more in the afternoon, Lorenzo picked up work were he left off in the morning. He focused on getting a better feeling with the front tyre and started the session on used tyres to perfect his set-up before pushing hard to set a hot lap on new hard tyres at the end of FP2.

He soon moved up to third in the provisional rankings with a 1’42.819s lap, but as times dropped at the end of the session, Lorenzo was unable to respond and ended the day in 14th position.

The Movistar Yamaha MotoGP teammates will be back in action tomorrow at 09:55 AM local track time.

JORGE LORENZO
The track is much worse than last year and I don‘t know why. There are some more bumps and less grip. It looks like our rivals are a lot better under these conditions. We have to understand what we can do to be fast with our bike. We hope it doesn‘t rain tomorrow and that the tarmac improves a little bit. Let‘s see if we can work on the bike to make it a more comfortable to ride.

Source: Yamaha