Lorenzo maintains good first day pace

A late best effort of 1’36.827 by Jorge Lorenzo at the end of FP2 at Estoril on Saturday morning saw him leap ahead of provisional leader Casey Stoner as the Fiat Yamaha rider took more than half a second of his pace-setting Friday best on the penultimate of his 28 laps in the session.

Lorenzo wants to repeat his remarkable 2008 Portuguese win this weekend to stay in the title hunt with his team-mate Valentino Rossi and things are going well for the Spaniard thus far at round 14.

Having topped the Friday timesheet Lorenzo commented on how good it was to see Stoner back in action after a three round break due to illness and the Australian was well on the pace on Saturday morning as he led the way provisionally before Lorenzo took back over at the top by a 0.325s margin.

Rossi was third fastest behind the young pretenders – a 0.75s gap behind Lorenzo – so he will be working hard with his crew to try and find something in qualifying later today.

Just under a second off the pace was Rossi’s former team-mate Colin Edwards (Monster Yamaha Tech 3) and just over a second off it was the ever threatening Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda).

Loris Capirossi (Rizla Suzuki), Andrea Dovizioso (Repsol Honda), Toni Elías (San Carlo Honda Gresini), Alex de Angelis (San Carlo Honda Gresini) and Nicky Hayden (Ducati Marlboro) were all in the top ten.