Lorenzo says rear tyre felt "dangerous" at Phillip Island

The three-time champion ended up 11th fastest during Wednesday’s running at the Australian track, 1.134 seconds off the pace of Honda’s Marc Marquez.

After a troubled start to his first Ducati test of 2017 at Sepang, Lorenzo was much happier this time around, but failed to improve his times late in the session like a number of other riders.

 He put this down to a new soft rear tyre he used in the closing stages that wasn’t behaving as expected, and felt “dangerous” in certain turns.

“The day started quite well, much closer than in Sepang on day one,” said Lorenzo. “We’ve been improving run by run.

“The problem was that the last hour, hour and a half, we put on a rear tyre that was not performing the same as the first ones and was dangerous in the left corners.

“We decided to stop and not risk pushing more to improve the lap time. That was the problem.”

He added: “We were half a second, three tenths off [the pace] on the first runs, but finally we finished 1.2s off on the third one.

“Anyway, we need to improve a little bit in some areas, and tomorrow we have something to test to improve this.”

Lorenzo, who has employed Ducati tester Michele Pirro as his track analyst for the 2017 season, also admitted that he has more work to do on his riding style to suit the demands of the Desmosedici.

“I need to adapt a little bit more to what the bike demands,” he explained.

“From turn to turn, on the fastest corners, our engine is still a bit nervous and I cannot brake in the way I would like to either.”

Additional reporting by Oriol Puigdemont