Lorenzo digs deep for pole

Jorge Lorenzo may have taken pole position in Japan but after the session it was clear that he had been unnerved to be pushed so hard by Valentino Rossi in qualifying. Having been comfortably faster than his teammate throughout the weekend Lorenzo was suddenly caught in a dogfight for pole position and afterwards he admitted that he had made a strategy mistake by opting for three stints in the session rather than the two favoured by Rossi.

“But with a new tyre you try everything to make the fastest lap possible. I am very happy with the pole position but maybe I did a mistake in choosing the strategy because today it probably was a bit better to just make two tyres and don’t show in this case the wheel to Valentino [Rossi], who is our strong rival at this moment.

“Apart from making the pole position I was always the fastest and had some little gap, but then they improved the setting I believe and this helped him to improve so much the lap time. Then on the second tyre this following probably helped him to be a little bit faster but anyway we have to learn from these mistakes in strategy for the future to be a little bit more clever.”