Jorge Lorenzo takes dominant victory at Le Mans

Movistar Yamaha MotoGP’s Jorge Lorenzo and teammate Valentino Rossi repeated their 1-2 performances from Jerez at the Monster Energy Grand Prix de France, this time finishing in reversed order.

Lorenzo started the 28-lap sprint exactly as he had planned. As the lights went out he had a lightning start from pole position and took the holeshot to create 0.4s lead after the first lap. Followed by Andrea Iannone and Andrea Dovizioso, he put his head down and dropped quick laps to keep a consistent gap of little more than half a second until, with 23 laps left, it was time to break away.

With clear track in front of him and behind him, the triple premier class World Champion rode consistently fast lap times in the 1’33s to manage the gap to his pursuers that had rapidly grown to more than two seconds.

Lorenzo was in a league of his own and remained unchallenged for the rest of the race. Leading the race from start to finish, the freshly turned 29 year old marked his birthday by securing a perfect victory, with a more than ten second margin, and to top off the celebrations he also took over the top spot in the championship standings.

Lorenzo’s first place earns him 25 points, while teammate Rossi adds 20 points to his score. These results put the Mallorcan in the lead in the championship standings on 90 points, five points ahead of his closest rival. Rossi stays third in the rankings with a 78-point total, seven points from second place.

JORGE LORENZO
I‘m very happy with this victory, because everything has been almost perfect. In the race I knew Marquez had the chance to fight for the victory with me, or if he wasn‘t very fast, he would have been second or third and that would have meant he would still have kept his first position in the championship, but he crashed. Now in the championship three riders scored zero or very little points in one race, so in some way we are starting the championship from zero again after those races, but with us being five points ahead.

Source: Yamaha