Movistar Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo altered his riding style during qualifying at Jerez to grab his first MotoGP pole position since Misano last year but remained tight-lipped on the exact details of the changes.
The Spanish former world champion broke the outright lap record on the way to pole this afternoon and said he took a lot of risks under braking and mid-corner as he had already wrapped up a front-row start for tomorrow’s race.
“I change a little bit the way of riding on the bike, they way of thinking and it works very well. Also, when everything is good, I don’t have any physical problem, I feel great on the bike, I can do great things and that’s what happened until now. I can say I feel great for the moment,” said Lorenzo, speaking at Jerez.
“It’s a combination of things. Here, we don’t have any big issues on the tyres like in Argentina where the soft option was dropping a lot and we decided to go for the hard. Here, there is no problem. I ride by instinct and it works, without thinking too much why. I try to keep the same way tomorrow.
“In Jerez, it is not easy to keep a constant 1’39 when it is hot, but I can do it quite comfortably. Let’s see if I can keep the same performance when it matters.”
Lorenzo also changed his strategy in qualifying and did three runs of one fast lap each, switching to his second bike for the last effort which is a mirror of Marquez’ usual style in the final timed session.
“We change the strategy this time. I knew that with the times on the tyre I should take profit of it. I made the 1’37.9 as I already had a 1’38.2 so I have nothing to lose. I didn’t risk too much in acceleration as if you highside you can injure yourself, but I push a lot more in braking and maximum lean and it works because I didn’t crash. Tomorrow the story will be different.”
