Since his arrival at Ducati, Jorge Lorenzo has gone through very difficult times, where doubt coexisted with incomprehension. How with such a record could such a great champion find himself sixteenth on a Sunday evening in Thailand, almost a second (0.948) behind leader Dani Pedrosa?
The bike is not in question since Jorge's Ducati is ahead of the other Desmosedici of Jack Miller, Andrea Dovizioso, Danilo Petrucci and Tito Rabat. How does the great from Spain find himself behind rookies like Takaaki Nakagami and Franco Morbidelli?
To Jorge Lorenzo, who are " Unfortunately for me, it was a very complicated three days, because I was never able to be really competitive. I didn't feel comfortable on the GP18 and since we also had some doubts, we decided to do a comparison test with last year's bike. As always, there are good and bad points with both versions, but for now it seems that the GP18 has greater potential, so we will focus on this bike in the next test in Qatar.
“In Sepang I felt really better, I had a great time on the last day. But during the three days in Thailand, I didn't feel well. On the third day, I didn't do a lap time chase, but a race simulation: a timed attack made no sense in these circumstances.
“We wanted to compare the old and new bikes. Already at Sepang it was clear that the new machine had big positive points, but also negative ones. This also applies to the 2017 machine. Getting a mix of them is very difficult. Although the new machine isn't much better than the old one here, we now know it has more potential.
“We have to wait and see what the engineers will do. Maybe they have new solutions or can transfer something from the old to the new machine. We also need to work on the settings, because on this track I had no feeling with the front wheel.
“I didn't have much confidence in the bike, so the liability was important. That's why we decided to test the 2017 machine again. It was important because it offers a little more advantage. If I had to decide now, I would choose the 2018 machine. In the first races you have to be patient and get the most out of it. Maybe things will be better in Qatar than here. Then we have to hope that we get a mix of both bikes as soon as possible.
“I can't go into too much detail, but the new chassis still has some negative points that I don't like. But we can't draw conclusions from this test because I only did a simulated race, without riding aggressively to achieve a fast time. We wouldn't have made it into the top 3, but we wouldn't have finished in the bottom three. »
Ranking of the day:
Combined ranking of the 3 days:
Photos © Ducati
