Despite setting an impressive pace in Friday practice, Jorge Lorenzo has revealed that he still isn't completely satisfied with the YZR-M1 and expects to go even quicker on Saturday.
The World Champion set a 1:22.056 to edge out Dani Pedrosa in FP2 but set 15 other lap times in the 1:22s range, giving cause for optimism ahead of Sunday's 32 lap race. But speaking on Friday evening, Lorenzo admitted that there was still some time to find ahead of qualifying.
“I am very happy to be back riding here at Laguna, a track I love. Today went pretty well, the bike felt ok. P1 I'm happy with but we need to try to improve corner entry for the bike because there are some tenths in that and it will give me more confidence turning in. It's not so bad to begin and we will try to go faster tomorrow!”
Team Manager Wilco Zeelenberg also felt there were things the team needed to work on but added that Lorenzo's consistency was hugely encouraging.
“Today was a nice practice day, we thought we would improve a little bit more but first is first which is the main thing. Jorge was quite consistent and feeling good. I think we have finished with the best position to start from tomorrow but we still have some things to solve.”
Yamaha teammate Ben Spies was fifth fastest, half a second off the pace as he begins his challenge for a home victory. The American was pretty happy with the feeling of his machine and is sure that the speed will come.
“Today hasn't been bad, we've worked on a lot of different set ups. We haven't found a perfect one, we've found a compromise so far but tomorrow we have a pretty good game plan on what we're going to fine tune from the bike we ended on today to get a bit of a better set up for front feel. I'm feeling good, I can tell the bike has it in it, you can see that from Jorge we're just not getting the maximum from it yet.”
Team Director Massimo Meregalli confirmed that Spies hadn't quite perfected his set-up yet but doesn't think they are too far away from what they're looking for.
“Ben is still working on the set up, he is not as confident with it yet as he would like to be. We will work tonight and tomorrow we will bring a new set up and look to make another step forward. We just have to fix some small details and we will be ready to race.”
