It was at the end of a rather difficult first day of testing that Jorge Lorenzo narrowly ranked in the top 10 in Thailand. With a time of 1'31.246, he obtained tenth position, 0.438 behind Cal Crutchlow's best time. His Desmosedici was only the fourth Ducati on the evening of this inaugural day, behind those of Andrea Dovizioso, Danilo Petrucci and Jack Miller.
Some riders are instinctive and quickly find themselves comfortable on motorcycles or circuits that they discover. We saw it this Friday with Marc Marquez et Andrea Dovizioso who very quickly achieved fast times in the morning. Other pilots are more laborious and need to think a lot and study the situation before being fast, which does not mean that they are not capable of achieving excellent results. Jorge Lorenzo is part of this second group, and he remained in the depths of the ranking for quite a long time during this first day before progressing regularly. And he still has two days left to improve.
It must be said that the situation was not easy at Ducati, with three different aerodynamic packages to test on a circuit where the riders were riding for the first time. This Saturday, new cycle parts will equip the Desmosedics, which will only complicate things. The advantage of this enormous work is that the team Luigi Dall'Igna will have a lot of information for the first GP which will take place at Losail, and recorded data for the Thai Grand Prix which will take place on October 7.
According to Jorge Lorenzo, who are " It's a cool track. I had difficulty understanding the limit but little by little, I got closer to the fastest. Today we had a lot of problems with setups that didn't allow us to be competitive, so I think we have a lot of room for improvement if we can solve all these little setup issues.
“This Friday I had a bit of difficulty on this track and I couldn't really be very fast, but the next two days we will have to find a way to improve the feeling with the bike, so that I can push very hard.
“At the end of the day we tried a new aerodynamic package, but it is too early to draw conclusions, especially because we are still far from the potential that we can express on this circuit. »
Results of the first day:
1. Cal Crutchlow, Honda, 1'30,797
2. Alex Rins, Suzuki, +0,012
3. Marc Marquez, Honda, 0,115
4. Andrea Dovizioso, Ducati, +0,148
5. Dani Pedrosa, Honda, +0,163
6. Danilo Petrucci, Ducati, +0,206
7. Jack Miller, Ducati, +0,247
8. Valentino Rossi, Yamaha, +0,392
9. Andrea Iannone, Suzuki, +0,438
10. Jorge Lorenzo, Ducati, +0,449
11. Maverick Vinales, Yamaha, +0,497
12. Johann Zarco, Yamaha, +0,508
13. Tito Rabat, Ducati, +0,726
14. Álvaro Bautista, Ducati, +0,728
15. Aleix Espargaro, Aprilia, +0,865
16. Scott Redding, Aprilia, +0,888
17. Takaaki Nakagami, Honda, +0,895
18. Karel Abraham, Ducati, +0,901
19. Franco Morbidelli, Honda, +0,932
20. Bradley Smith, KTM, +0,944
21. Tom Lüthi, Honda, +1,919
22. Xavier Siméon, Ducati, +1,923
23. Mika Kallio, KTM, +1,952
24. Hafizh Syahrin, Yamaha, +2,368
Photos © Ducati
