Jorge Lorenzo was graceful after losing the Czech Republic Grand Prix win to Dani Pedrosa, admitting his rival had been “cleverer and braver” than he’d been. Pedrosa made the decisive move at the final corner and although Lorenzo was happy to praise his compatriot, he added that he doesn’t plan on being on the losing side again.
“I really enjoyed that race, mainly in the last laps, Dani and I tried everything for the win. We are so close in the Championship that every point is important. It was a very strategic race, in some parts of it I was slowing down to relax a bit and get some air and I think Dani was a little later on as well, staying calm and preparing for the last laps. When Dani was pushing a lot I took a lot of risks to stay with him and finally I had to try to pass him, the victory was so close I had to try. This time Dani was cleverer than me and braver so congratulations to him, next time maybe it will be different! A big thank you to my team as well who worked really hard and made a very competitive bike for me.”
Yamaha teammate Ben Spies had another afternoon to forget with a clutch problem dropping him to fourteenth on the first lap. The American did recover to eighth but crashed out on lap nine, something he was quick to take responsibility for.
“The crash today was no other fault than myself, I was trying to get back into a rhythm and catch the group in front of me because I could see they were coming back and I had a good lap times for coming through. I’m really disappointed not just for me but for the team as they’ve done an excellent job this weekend, we’ve showed speed and motivation all weekend which is hard to do after Laguna and Indy. The race was really over for me before turn one because the clutch overheated off the line. It was no one’s fault; we checked the data and my practice starts are identical to my race starts. We checked the clutch and there is nothing wrong with it, it just overheated and took over two laps to cool down enough to give it 100% by which time the race was over. I still tried to get the best out of it I could and just made a small mistake.”
