Lorenzo gains championship hopes with fourth 2009 win

The incredible story of Jorge Lorenzo’s 2009 campaign took a distinct turn for the better this weekend with a repeat of his maiden MotoGP win at Estoril - from pole position - to top off a brilliant weekend.

The Spanish star was the main man on all three days at the bwin.com Grande Premio de Portugal and he cruised to a 6.3s win over Casey Stoner to the delight of his Fiat Yamaha crew, whilst on the other side of the pit-box there were stern faces as Valentino Rossi for once lacked competitiveness and saw his title lead dropped to 18 points as he come home fourth. Lorenzo was 10 seconds in front of Dani Pedrosa and a huge 23.4s ahead of Rossi.

Afterwards, Lorenzo stated, “I didn’t expect to win with such a gap. It was a perfect weekend as we dominated in practice, feeling great on the bike and also in the race I think it was one of the best performances in my life. At the beginning it was a little bit difficult to open a big gap because I could only do it one tenth of a second at a time, but then Casey’s rhythm dropped and I was able to maintain my pace.”

On what the result means to his quest for the 2009 MotoGP title, Lorenzo added, “It will still be very difficult but now we can say that it is not impossible. I think I can take a few risks because I don’t have anything to lose. Valentino has to win the championship and we just have to keep trying.”