Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies manage third, fourth places for Catalunya GP – MotoGP news
Yamaha Factory Racing riders Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies made a good effort to score the third and fourth places for the Gran Premi Aperol de Catalunya on Saturday.
The Barcelona hero, Lorenzo will start from the front row in front of his home crowd.
The qualifying session was blessed with a pleasant sunny day. Under these favourable conditions, the Yamaha factory riders were able to shed off a few seconds from their lap times compared to the free practice sessions.
Lorenzo’s best lap time was 1:42.728 seconds with a top speed of 323.7 km/h. The Spanish rider was 0.315 seconds slower than Marco Simoncelli who scored the pole position. Jorge Lorenzo swept off a second from his previous best time in the last free practice
session.
Lorenzo said, “It has been a tough session today. In the morning it was good but in the afternoon we struggled a little bit. I pushed as hard as I could for pole but it was not possible.”
The Spaniard says Sunday’s race will be a tough fight for victory. The Yamaha factory riders are a little apart from the top fast riders but the gap has been shortened from earlier practice sessions. Lorenzo also added that a minor improvement can put them
in a fight for a podium finish but the victory is far away at the moment.
Ben Spies was riding good enough to clean two seconds off from his last best lap time effort in third free practice session. Occasionally he was able to lap second fastest in the qualifiers, but his teammate Lorenzo gave his last best shot and dropped him
to second row start at fourth place.
Spies said, “It was a good session although we were missing a little bit of time out there. Looking at the ideal split times it would have put us on the front row. We’re in a good position in fourth all the way to the left of the grid so hopefully we can
have a good start and have a good first couple of corners.”
The American rider is satisfied by the improvements of his M1 and is hoping for a better race day on Sunday, June 6, 2011.
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