Lorenzo Struggles With Tyres In Assen

It was hard to look past Jorge Lorenzo taking a fifth straight win of the 2015 season coming into the Dutch TT weekend. But the Lorenzo that turned up to the TT Circuit Assen this weekend wasn't the same that left the Catalan Grand Prix.

An unusually poor qualifying saw the Yamaha rider in 8th but he made a blinding start, and by the eleventh corner had found himself up to 3rd behind Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi. Struggling with the asymmetric medium rear tyre, Lorenzo's pace stagnated and he dropped 13-seconds to leaders at the chequered flag.

Lorenzo drops ten points behind championship leader Rossi, and with the Sachsenring up next, a track he has never won at before, that gap could very well extend. But the Spaniard is pragmatic about his chances:

“We are still ten points behind the leader, which is good. It was 29 points after Argentina so now ten points after a difficult weekend that we had before a race is not so bad. I make a good start, I was really focused in the first lap to recover positions and did it faster than I expected, because I was already in third position when we crossed the finish line for the first time. I tried to keep up with the pace of Valentino and Marc, but they were really strong and I realised that today was not the day. Today was the day to fight and keep this third place, which is very good for the championship. If we struggle and still finish in third place, it's a good thing. Valentino was a little bit more competitive here from the beginning, Marc improved his bike and was more comfortable to keep up the pace and for us it was the opposite. We found that the harder tyre gave us a little bit more problems and in two sector I couldn't be fast enough and lost so much time in sector toe and four. In both I lost half a second and that made it impossible to have a good pace. The next race will be a bit more complicated at Sachsenring, because I've never won there, but you don't know what might happen.”

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