Misano MotoGP: Jorge Lorenzo hoping to avoid early trouble

With such a massive lead in the MotoGP world championship going into the Misano clash, Jorge Lorenzo is desperate to avoid a melee at the tight first corner in tomorrow’s race.

The Spaniard failed to claim pole position for the third successive race this afternoon as a best lap of 1.34.256 left him trailing in-form rival Dani Pedrosa by 0.308s.
But the Fiat Yamaha rider was still satisfied to be on the front row, with the risk of an early incident in the 28-lap race at the back of everybody’s mind.

The double world 250GP champion had a narrow escape 12 months ago when he was almost involved in a second corner pile-up instigated by Alex de Angelis that also took out American duo Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden.

Lorenzo, who is looking for an eighth win of the campaign, said: “It is very important to be on the front row because the first two corners are a bit dangerous and I almost crashed there last year with de Angelis, Hayden and Colin.

“I am still not as fast as some of my rivals at the moment but I am still sure I can fight for the win.

“I improved quite a lot with the lap times so I’m confident. We have improved in every practice here and after the troubles of yesterday I’m happy about this session.

“I have a good pace now and I’m feeling confident about a good race. Unfortunately we couldn’t profit as much as we might have with the softer tyre at the end of the session and our bike isn’t the fastest here, but we have good corner speed so I hope we will be able to stay with the leaders.”