During this post-race press conference which also brought together Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo answered three questions.
In the first the notion of instinct appears, in the second figure luck, and in the third the concept of loyalty, applied in this case to oneself in the sense of believing in oneself.
We can perhaps think that after his bad patch, the Mallorcan champion functions a little more mentally and morally than the others. In this case, this second place could undoubtedly boost his confidence, and we would not be overly surprised to see him shine in Japan…
But as usual, in order to avoid any sometimes excessive journalistic interpretation, we offer you a “raw” translation of all of his words. ...
Jorge, a fall this morning and a second place at the finish...
“Yes, sometimes a negative thing leads to a positive thing. Today, the fall meant that I tried both bikes in the warm-up laps, whereas normally in the dry we only do one lap, but today we wanted to try the bike that had fallen and we tried both. And when I tried the first bike with the hard rear tire, I felt OK, well OK, because during the tests I didn't like the feeling with the hard. When I tried the second bike, I didn't feel the same, the bike had more movement, in acceleration and braking, so it was difficult to choose on the grid. Normally, it's difficult to choose in this situation, to change at the last minute, but in the end, my instinct after the fall made me do this race; fast at the start, consistent, and I gave everything on the track, and in the end, a very difficult situation where we expected to finish 6 or 7th, and finally the race surprises you in a positive way and you finish second very close to the winner. I'm delighted, I'm very happy, and, to be honest, we saved a very difficult situation. »
There was a huge fight….
“Especially in the beginning, no one wanted to be overtaken, and Maverick, Marc and I wanted to stay in the lead. We were very aggressive, I had fun on the first lap, then the race stabilized and we had the same pace as Rossi and Maverick with a full tank, then suddenly, lap after lap, I felt better and I was able to brake later, and I gradually closed the gap with Maverick and Valentino. But when I passed Rossi I started to lose a bit of rhythm, so I went from 49.0 to 49.4, so Rossi stayed behind and I knew he wanted to try in the last laps, so I been lucky. I was lucky that he made that mistake under braking, because I'm sure our fight would have lasted until the last corner. »
When you were 4th, were you thinking more about Maverick and Valentino in front of you, or Aleix and Dani behind?
“I was very focused on riding as best as I could, even on a track where this bike doesn't give me good confidence, I tried my best to keep them in my field of vision. Everything can happen. This year, in this MotoGP championship, anything can happen; no one expected Dani to win at Misano, and he finally did. And today we expected him to stay with Marc, the two Hondas fighting for victory, and he finished 6th, 17 seconds behind the leader. So in this championship, if you are not there, you do the first 10 laps and you don't know where you can finish, so you always have to be attentive in all situations, and you can always be faithful (editor's note: you must always believe) that you can have a good race when you are at the back. »
