Jorge Lorenzo will start his first grand prix of 2009 off the front row as he narrowly missed out, finishing qualifying in forth place.
Still suffering from food poisoning, Lorenzo struggled for rear grip thorough out the session only managing to improve in that later staged of the session.
A late charge by Dani Pedrosa saw him slot ahead of Lorenzo by just 0.001 seconds.
“I’m a bit disappointed to lose my 100% front-row qualifying record by such a tiny amount,”but today we just didn’t quite have enough pace.” said the Fiat Yamaha rider.
“We still don’t have enough grip on the rear and the tyre is spinning too much, which makes it difficult to be fast enough. Tomorrow I will try to adapt my riding style instead in order to try to make it onto the podium. I feel better than yesterday but I’m still not at 100%; I feel quite weak still because I haven’t been able to eat much. I will have to try before tomorrow in order to have enough strength for the race. I don’t feel any pressure, I will just go out and do my best.”
Team manager Daniele Romagnoli was disappointed with forth place but was happy that they were making improvements and is now concentrating on the race.
“It’s a real pity to miss out on the front row by just one millisecond after we have been so consistent all season!” said Romagnoli.
“We still have rear grip issues at the moment, the team have done a good job to improve it over the sessions but we still have some work to do. The warm-up will be very important for us tomorrow in order to try to solve the problem and put us in a position to be able to challenge in the fight for the race and the championship tomorrow.”
