Lorenzo ready to up the pace

Having qualified in second place for Sunday’s Shell Advance Malaysian Grand Prix, Jorge Lorenzo knows that he will need to improve his pace on hard tyres.

Lorenzo struggled in the Saturday morning practice and at the start of qualifying, spending much of both sessions outside the top four, before a change to softer Bridgestone tyres allowed him to record his lap of 2’01.087 which secured second on the grid.

At over half a second off Rossi – who set a new pole position lap record – Lorenzo is aware that the race pace will be demanding on his tyres.

“This practice for us was not so easy, we struggled a lot with the hard tyre but fortunately at the end of the practice with the soft one we made a big step forward and we were able to finish second,” said the Spaniard. “I think it will be important to improve our pace with the hard tyre if we want a good result on Sunday, but we are still not ready so we have to fight. It will be difficult because we just did a fast lap on soft tyres and the race pace will be 2’01.5.”

Lorenzo continued, “The conditions are basically the same as yesterday so I can't blame them, but we just don't have the same levels of grip and confidence that we had before and it's hard to understand why. Now we all need to study the data and work out what we can do for the warm-up tomorrow. I am happy that we were able to be back on the front row as this will be important, now we will just try our best to be in better shape for the race. It won’t be the easiest race for us in theory but it is still possible to win.”