FIAT Yamaha‘s championship leader Jorge Lorenzo will start on the front row of the grid for tomorrows San Marino Grand Prix, keeping his record of 12 front row starts in 12 races this season. Valentino Rossi will start behind him on the second row of the grid in 4th, narrowly missing out on a front row start at his home grand prix.
After making some adjustments to his M1 after struggling on practice yesterday, Lorenzo was able to challenge for pole, and had a session long scrap with Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner. It was looking good for the Spaniard to claim pole, but Pedrosa had other ideas, putting in a brilliant final lap.
“We have improved in every practice here and after the troubles of yesterday I’m happy about this session.” said Lorenzo “I have a good pace now and I’m feeling confident about a good race. Unfortunately we couldn’t profit as much as we might have with the softer tyre at the end of the session and our bike isn’t the fastest here, but we have good corner speed so I hope we will be able to stay with the leaders. I am feeling excited and motivated for tomorrow’s race.”
Valentino Rossi will be hoping to emulate his previous 2 results at the circuit, with a win in tomorrows race, and was in with a shout of pole position but was held up in traffic. “The front row would have been good for the race of tomorrow but I just missed out today. I think I had the potential today but unfortunately with the last tyre I found some traffic at the end.”
“The rear tyre is going to be very important for tomorrow’s race and we still have a decision to make; at moment we are thinking more of the hard one but we need to wait and see the weather. I am feeling better here than in Indy because it’s much cooler; I am still suffering a bit with my shoulder in the hard right braking zones but it’s not too bad. Anyway it’s fantastic to be here in Italy with all of these fans and I’m excited about tomorrow. The helmet is a joke about my timekeeping – we have put a big clock on the top of it with a different helmet showing the right time for each session so I make sure that I arrive on time!”
