Lorenzo delivers with masterful Misano victory

Yamaha Factory Racing’s Jorge Lorenzo delivered a masterful performance today to win the San Marino Grand Prix in stunning form. The victory, his sixth successive Italian Grand Prix win, was delivered after a 28 lap race of inch perfect riding from the reigning world champion.

Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Yamaha MotoGP

He was quick to build a comfortable gap to the chasing pack that was unbroken to the line, allowing him to claim his fifth Grand Prix win of the season.

Valentino Rossi initially dropped a couple of places to fifth off the start line but was quick to re-pass Aleix Espargaro on the first lap to slot into fourth chasing Marquez and Dani Pedrosa ahead. The Local hero was hot on the tail of Marquez and took advantage of an error by the young Spaniard to dive past up the inside and move into third place chasing Pedrosa. Unfortunately some issues with braking cost some valuable time and Marquez was able to re-pass, leaving Rossi in a lonely fourth position for the remainder of the race to the finish line.

Lorenzo’s stunning victory moves him up into second place in the championship, tied on points with Pedrosa at 219, 34 behind Marquez with five races remaining. Rossi’s fourth place finish keeps him in fourth place in the championship on 169 points, 23 ahead of Cal Crutchlow in fifth.

Jorge Lorenzo (Position 1st- Time 42.39.802): “Luckily we improved the bike a lot in warm up, especially in braking so we improved the lap time and the pace quite a bit. I was convinced to follow my strategy of the last couple of races which was to try to break away and finally I could do it. The first two laps I had a big advantage so I had to keep pushing to maintain a distance because they never gave up and wanted to catch me. I’m happy, we recovered five points and we are closer to Marc. I need to be constant and try to win races and stay focused.”

Valentino Rossi (Position 2nd- Time +5.990): “All the weekend our performance was quite good, I stayed with the top three and I raised my level, especially in qualifying, I could push stronger with the new tyres and make the first row. The expectation for the race was very high, after the start the top guys were very fast but my fastest lap was close to theirs. Unfortunately after some laps I was in trouble in braking and entering corners.

I was struggling in hard braking and made some mistakes going wide and step-by-step they pulled away. I made a small mistake on turn seven and lost two seconds and by then already I had too much disadvantage. It's a pity because we wanted to try for the podium here in Italy in front of all the fans in Misano. We hope the weather remains good for tomorrow as we have to try some new parts.”

Wilco Zeelenberg - Yamaha Factory Racing - Team Manager: “Day number three here and an incredible race in Misano, our first seamless gearbox victory of the season. Yesterday we didn't really believe we could do this but after warm up we found a better package. Jorge felt it too and it gave him a lot of motivation. He pulled out the first four or five laps at an incredible pace and I think that made the difference towards the end of the race.”

Massimo Meregalli - Yamaha Factory Racing - Team Director: “It was a great work from Jorge and the whole team this weekend. We started on Friday with problems and have improved step by step in each session. This morning we found in the warm up the best solution to get the feeling back and then Jorge made the difference.

He delivered an amazing output with 1.5 seconds after two laps, he maintained a constant pace and dominated the other riders. We were unable to get the podium with Vale. After yesterday afternoon we thought to have both riders on the podium but it was not to be. Tomorrow will be important to test the material we could not test at Brno.”

Yamaha Racing