Fiat Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo qualified just 0.024s behind his illustrious second placed colleague Valentino Rossi on the Qatar grid on Saturday, but as he commences his second season in MotoGP the Spaniard is playing down his chances in Sunday’s race.
Lorenzo shone under the Losail floodlights on his premier class debut last year as he rode to second place from pole position at the start of 2008, but he tried to play down his chances of a repeat performance after qualifying for the 2009 season-opener.
Third on the grid, the young Majorcan rider stated, “I’m not happy, not because of the third place with the soft tyres, but because with the harder ones I expected a better pace. But anyway that’s how things are and tomorrow we will have to struggle to stay with the front group. That’s racing, maybe at one track you don’t have a good pace but at the next circuit things could be easier.”
He continued, “During the test here I was faster with the hard tyre but for some reason we have the opposite situation this time and I am much faster with the soft tyre. Now we need to work hard to try to solve the problem tonight. On Sunday I won’t be thinking about winning, just about doing the best I can.”