Jorge Lorenzo put his Fiat Yamaha Team M1 on the front row of the grid for the second race in a row today, qualifying third for the first ever MotoGP race at the historic Indianpolis Motor Speedway. As in Misano, Lorenzo will share the front row with team-mate Valentino Rossi and Casey Stoner, albeit with their positions reversed after Rossi took a stunning pole position this afternoon.
Today’s two sessions were run in very different conditions to yesterday’s washout, with this afternoon’s qualifying taking place under sunny skies with ambient temperatures in the mid thirties. Lorenzo made steady progress with his dry set-up over the hour and moved into provisional pole position with 12 minutes to go. He was then relegated down the grid in the last ten minutes but his last effort with a Michelin qualifying tyre was good enough to put him back on the front row.
Unfortunately more bad weather is expected tomorrow so yesterday’s wet set-up looks like it will come in useful. The race will be run over 28 laps and the lights will go out at 1500 East Coast time (GMT-4).
Jorge Lorenzo - Position: 3Time: 1’41.177Laps: 27
“I am so happy that this track is different to how I expected, because I really enjoyed myself this afternoon! I thought it would be quite dangerous but in fact I feel really safe on my M1 here, which is allowing me to be fast. Some of the corners are really close together which I enjoy because it means I can ride very smoothly in the style that I like. It’s a good track for me. We are on the front row for the second race in a row and this shows that we are truly getting back to our best, so I want to thank my team for their work, both here and in Misano. We are still not perfect in the wet or the dry so we need to make some improvements in warm-up, but we don’t know what the weather will do tomorrow so we will have to wait and see.”
Daniele Romagnoli -Team Manager
“This was a good qualifying session for us today and Jorge rode very well with the qualifying tyre. For the race in the dry it looks like we have quite a good pace but we still need to improve in section one, where we need more front grip. We have some things to try in warm-up so we hope it will be dry, but we have to be ready for a wet day as well. If that’s the case then we will have to try to confirm what we found yesterday. Anyway, it’s good to be on the front row so we hope that we can make the most of it once again.”
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