Lorenzo happy with progress in final two practice sessions

 In MotoGP, News

The second night of free practice under the floodlights of the Losail International circuit was split into two 45 minute sessions ahead of tomorrow’s first qualifying heat of the 2011 MotoGP Championship. The two heats formed the last opportunity for riders Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies to fine tune their YZR-M1 set ups before the fight for pole position gets underway in qualifying tomorrow night.

Lorenzo continued to make steps forward with set up, the young Mallorcan World Champion finding his form and improving on yesterday’s final free practice lap time of 1’56.586 by 0.366 seconds in the first of today’s heats. The second session saw improvements again, the refined set up allowing Lorenzo to show a glimpse of his talent for fast consistent laps, splitting his final session into a shorter and a longer run and bringing his time down to be just one of four riders breaking into the 1.55s.

Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha Factory Racing Rider, FP2 – 5th, 1’56.220 (18 laps) FP3 – 4th, 1’55.814 (21 laps)
“Today went pretty well; I’m happy with the progress we’ve made during the last sessions. I like the bike a lot more and we’ve improved a lot from the test. We are struggling to fight with some of our competitors but we won’t give up, we will continue to work on it and see if we can find another half a second tomorrow. I will try to make a good qualifying session to start on the front row. It will be a long race and we have a good race pace so I think we have a chance to finish on the podium.”

Wilco Zeelenberg, Yamaha Factory Racing Team Manager
“Yesterday in my quote I said I had the feeling that we would move forward, we found a way and today we improved so Jorge is getting better and better. The bike is delivering better handling so the lap times are improving. Both riders are very close again, we still have a little step to do but so far we are pleased with what we have achieved today.”

Massimo Meregalli, Yamaha Factory Racing Team Director
“Both Jorge and Ben are quite satisfied with their bike set ups, we tried to run the soft tyre with both of them to see how many laps we could do so now we know which tyre will be better for the race. I think we are ready for the time attack tomorrow, let’s see what we can do.”

Source: Yamaha Racing

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