Jorge Lorenzo takes second place in Aragon Grand Prix
Today‘s Gran Premio Movistar de Aragón proved to be the most action-filled race of the season so far, as Movistar Yamaha MotoGP rider Jorge Lorenzo fought off his rivals to secure a hard-fought second place.
Lorenzo didn‘t let a crash in warm-up this morning hold him back in today‘s race. The local hero had a brilliant start from third on the grid and fought for the holeshot with Marc Marquez. Maverick Viñales soon joined the fight for the front, beginning a Spanish duel that had the race fans on the edge of their seats.
A flurry of activity followed that saw Lorenzo finish the first lap in third position, closely followed by his teammate. A mistake by Marquez two laps later made Lorenzo storm to second place and he continued to claw his way to Viñales, but he had to let his teammate past.
The top three riders briefly formed a leading group as they upped their pace, dropping low 1‘49s laps. However, Marquez was closing in and with 17 laps remaining he found a way past Lorenzo, but the Mallorcan wasn‘t fazed. He made his experience count and waited for the right moment to fight his way back to the front, which came with 14 laps to go when he didn‘t need a second invitation to pass Viñales after the compatriot had gone wide.
Lorenzo cleverly continued his race in such a way that he still had enough rubber left on his Michelins to make a final charge five laps before the end of the race to smoothly take over second place. He was consistently stalked by Rossi, but he didn‘t let it shake his confidence and held off the Italian‘s attack to take second place over the line, 2.740s from first.
Lorenzo‘s superb race craft delivers him 20 points. He remains in third position, now just 14 points behind his teammate in second.
The Movistar Yamaha MotoGP will next head to Japan in three weeks‘ time for the Grand Prix of Japan, the first of the three overseas races.
JORGE LORENZO
Sometimes a bad situation or a bad thing brings you a good thing and that‘s what happened when I crashed. I got almost injured and was almost in pain, as has happened in the past, but this made me do two warming up laps, one with the hard tyre and one on the soft tyre. Finally on these two laps the hard tyre suddenly gave me a good confidence, even if I was warming up and very slow, so my instinct told me that I needed to change my race tyre to the hard one and this crash and bit of instinct for sure gave me the possibility to do this race the way I was riding it. I didn‘t expect to finish on the podium, I thought I would finish maybe sixth or seventh, but finally the race was again surprising. It‘s been a difficult weekend for me, but sometimes these kind of situations bring you to the top.
Source: Yamaha
