It has been a tough start to 2018 for Jorge Lorenzo (Ducati Team), and it was a tough end to the Spanish GP after THAT moment that saw him, teammate Andrea Dovizioso and Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa all crash out – but that wasn’t, in some ways, the headline for the ‘Spartan’.
“I know it was the most shocking thing in the race but I don’t want to give it too much value, because it was clearly bad luck for the three riders,” he explains, affirming there was more to his weekend than the incident. “We are the three cleanest riders in the Championship and we were very unlucky. I don’t want to say it’s someone’s fault because we’re always very clean. It’s very bad luck, especially for Andrea and Ducati because they are fighting for the Championship.”
The zero – after Dovi arrived at the round as the points leader – was the biggest consequence in many ways, given all riders luckily escaped injury. And the incident and loss of points aside, Lorenzo’s race was a stunner – leading from Turn 1 and for much of the first half of the race. Focusing on that, the Spanish GP was a big step forward.
“My race was a very, very good race,” the Ducati rider affirms. “From the start, the determination I had, the speed I had at the beginning…because I didn’t have pace but I put everything into it to be as quick as possible.”
From a lightning start off the second row into the lead, Lorenzo certainly did that – and was in second when the crash happened. Now, looking ahead and after some new parts were brought to Jerez, the future looks bright.
“The Championship is very hard to fight for, so my goal is to go fast, to try and win races, and to work on the bike to have better cornering,” Lorenzo concludes. “If we can get that in the future we can win some races. Not the Championship this year because we have almost no points! But in this race we’ve been on a good path trying to make the bike more smooth, and we’ll keep going that way to try and find these tenths we need to try and win races.”
Next up? Le Mans, where Lorenzo has two of the biggest winning margins in recent history: 10.6 seconds in the dry in 2015, and 17.7 seconds in the wet in 2009. Can he repeat his Jerez heroics at another talisman venue?