MotoGP: Jorge Lorenzo tops Friday practice for the French Grand Prix
JORGE Lorenzo celebrated his birthday in style by topping opening practice in France, while Valentino Rossi endured a much less happy Friday than at Jerez.
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REIGNING world champion Jorge Lorenzo celebrated his birthday in style by dominating opening practice for Sunday’s French Grand Prix while Yamaha teammate Valentino Rossi struggled in 10th place.
Lorenzo, who turned 29 on Wednesday, clocked 1min 32.830 sec with Italy’s Andrea Iannone 0.339 sec behind on a Ducati while the world champion’s Spanish compatriot Marc Marquez, on a Honda, was third fastest, 0.483 sec off the pace.
Lorenzo won the season opener in Qatar before current series leader Marquez stormed to victory in Argentina and the United States.
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Rossi, the nine-time world champion, won last time out in Spain but endured a miserable practice session on Friday, finishing in 10th at 1.144 sec off Lorenzo.
“I am very satisfied because from the beginning we started with a good setting and I was relatively fast, quite comfortably,” said Lorenzo, who won at Le Mans in 2009, 2010, 2012 and last year.
“In the afternoon we improved the bike a little bit and we went even faster with quite a big difference, a couple of tenths, to the rider in second place.
“It wasn’t just one lap, we also had a good pace so it was a very good start to the weekend. Let’s see if tomorrow we can increase the pace a little bit more and prepare for the race to our best capabilities.”
Marquez, a winner in France in 2014, has a 17-point lead over Lorenzo in the championship and admitted Friday had been a tough test for him and Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa who was eighth fastest overall.
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“Today was demanding. We knew this circuit would cause us to struggle a bit, but we’re overcoming things fairly well,” said two-time world champion Marquez.
“I have a good pace and I’m feeling good, although we’re losing some time on both of this circuit’s hard acceleration points; it’s something that’s difficult to recover from afterwards.”
Rossi was left to bemoan both sessions where he was constantly struggling on a track where his last victory was eight years ago.
“We tried a lot of different things for the setting because this morning I wasn’t fast enough, but unfortunately in the afternoon the situation was worse and we didn’t find the right way,” said the Italian.
“In fact, in the morning I was also quite slow and for this reason I didn’t try the third tyre from Michelin, because we didn’t have time. I will try it tomorrow morning.”
Jack Miller lopped almost a full second off his quickest time in the morning session to end the day in 18th, despite still not being anywhere near full fitness.
“I feel pretty good and I don’t think the final position shows how happy we are with our performance today,” Miller said.
“The lap times are pretty close and we know we have a lot of margin to improve, but overall it was a good day and we’ll keep working hard to be even stronger tomorrow.”
Originally published as MotoGP: Jorge Lorenzo tops Friday practice for the French Grand Prix
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