Jorge Lorenzo was already injured when he rolled down pitlane on the Friday of Qatar’s MotoGP opener but a crash day two of practice plus a slipping clutch during the race meant it was a debut to forget.

The Repsol Honda man was battered and bruised when he took to the grid and it was only after a 13th-place finish that he was able to get some X-rays and found he had cracked his first rib on the right-hand side when he went over the top of his RC213V.

“The big crash destroyed a little bit our good weekend that we expected in FP1 when we started extremely good,” said Lorenzo, speaking at the track.

“After the crash we have never been as quick as the first day. Without the crash I would be directly into Q2, probably second row, third row, and everything would change.

“Also we had problems on the clutch from yesterday and especially today on the warm-up lap and in the first three, four laps the clutch was spinning.

“I needed to close the throttle in some fast parts of the track to avoid burning the clutch. I came from P16 to P20 and it was more difficult to recover. Small pieces of bad luck all weekend that take away our real potential, I think.”

Lorenzo has been told it will take two to three weeks for the rib to heal but is determined to make the Argentina round.