Fiat Yamaha Team rider Jorge Lorenzo sealed the seventh front row start of his rookie season today, qualifying second for tomorrow’s Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island. The Spaniard, who has won the last two 250cc races here, will start behind Casey Stoner with Nicky Hayden rounding out the front row.
After finding himself in better shape in the wet than the dry yesterday, a few overnight set-up changes to his M1 put the youngster in fine form today, which was dry and sunny. Lorenzo was third fastest this morning and carried on in the same fashion this afternoon, improving his race pace throughout the early part of the session before setting consecutively faster times with each of his four Michelin qualifying tyres. His final lap was just 0.069 seconds off Stoner’s and, with the first four this afternoon all under the previous pole record, it looks like being an exciting battle when the race gets underway at the later time of 1600 local time tomorrow.
Jorge Lorenzo - Position 2nd Time - 1’28.734 - Laps 30
I’ve been fairly consistent throughout the sessions here and we made another step this morning which allowed me to be quite fast this afternoon. The weather was more complicated than it looked because the wind was very strong, but anyway my bike worked very well. I am disappointed to miss out on the pole position by such a tiny amount but anyway I am happy to be on the front row and also to have such a good race pace. My rivals are fast too and we know that it is going to be a hard battle, but I am really looking forward to it. Yesterday we tried some practice starts, because this has been an issue for me lately, so now I hope I can get a good start tomorrow, stay at the front and try to fight. Thanks to my team and Michelin for getting us onto the front row again; the fourth race in a row!”
Daniele Magnoli - Team Manager
“It’s very good to be starting on the front row here; tomorrow we have a real chance of a good race. We improved quite a lot in the dry from yesterday, but we still have to improve the rear traction a little more. Our pace today was pretty good and we selected the best tyre, hopefully the conditions will allow us to use this one tomorrow. With the Michelin qualifiers Jorge was very fast and unfortunately we missed the front row by just 0.069 seconds! We will use tomorrow’s warm-up to refine the setting a little bit more but we’re in good shape and we’re looking forward to an exciting race.”
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