Lorenzo sighting lap crash a first for Romagnoli

Jorge Lorenzo once again had a scare before the race had even started at Mugello, crashing on the sighting lap in an unexpected freak fall. The incident caught everyone by surprise, including Team Manager Daniele Romagnoli.

“Today everything happened. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. We were waiting for Jorge to come, then I heard on the radio ‘Hey, Jorge has just crashed!’ and I just thought ‘What?!” said the Italian on the lowside that left the Fiat Yamaha mechanics frantically working to repair the battered M1.

“He was lucky to recover the bike and get it back to the pits, change the bike and get back onto the grid by a few seconds. Also after that it was really difficult because there was some big damage. We were expecting a flag-to-flag race, so the mechanics did a really amazing job.”

Added complications came from the rapidly-drying track, which created a race against time for the mechanics to prepare the machine before Lorenzo needed to make the switch. Romagnoli admitted that luck had been on their side, giving his Spanish charge the chance to take second place.

“We were lucky. I think that we had the bike fixed by lap seven, and Jorge was ready to come in on lap ten. So we didn’t have to delay Jorge’s coming in to change bikes. We had enough time to rebuild the bike. We showed him on the board with a P for ‘pronta’ (ready in Italian). I think that we have a good potential at the moment to be on the podium at every race.”