Lorenzo and Romagnoli reflect on positive test

At the end of Monday’s testing day at the Circuit de Catalunya, the last of four hot but successful days for joint World Championship leader Jorge Lorenzo at his home track, the Fiat Yamaha rider and his manager Daniele Romagnoli spoke to motogp.com about the work they had undertaken.

After completing 80 laps in the Barcelona heat, Lorenzo ended Monday third on the timesheet with a best effort of 1’42.446 – faster than his best lap in Sunday’s race.

Afterwards Lorenzo stated, “We tested some things on our electronic system, some rear suspension tests. I tried to concentrate on my riding style, to improve on braking, which means braking later, and especially in the morning I managed to go a bit faster. But in the afternoon I couldn’t improve my lap time because it was so hot and the engine wasn’t running as well.”

Asked to assess the overall progress his rider has made in the last 12 months, with the Spaniard 12 points better off than he was at this stage last season and just 0.095s away from a third victory in six races on Sunday following his amazing battle with Valentino Rossi, Romagnoli said of Lorenzo, “He is definitely more mature than last year. He is calmer and that is especially important, because sometimes last year he made mistakes at the beginning of sessions or early in the races.”

“This year his approach is more methodic. He always tries now to perfect his bike setting and then he begins to push. He is very consistent now, fighting for the podium every time and starting on pole position.”

With Lorenzo now having spent six rounds on the 2009 generation Bridgestone tyres, Romagnoli commented on his performance on the Japanese company’s material, “His level with Bridgestone now is really high. Of course he still needs to learn something at each new track because the tyres differ at the various circuits, so this learning process will end at the end of the season, but now his confidence with the tyres is really high.”

With the championship battle heating up in the Fiat Yamaha pit-box, Lorenzo remains cool about the challenge of overcoming his legendary team-mate Rossi and says that despite the wall separating the riders he has access to the data of the Italian star, as well as the information from Colin Edwards and James Toseland in the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 team, which can help with bike set-up at each GP.

“I can check more information than last year,” explains Lorenzo. “The wall is only physical, a physical problem. We can see each other’s telemetry. Normally I check the telemetry of each Yamaha rider because it is easy to see if you can improve on certain corners, to see if you can take different lines and so on. It’s important to always see what the other riders are doing.”