Jorge Lorenzo took pole position for the British GP today, but he wasn’t unaffected by the conditions in FP4. Lorenzo was one of 5 riders that went off track at Stowe due to large amounts of surface water and spoke about both this incident and his pole position in the post qualifying press conference.
Firstly, Lorenzo spoke about how he tackled qualifying in the mixed conditions to take pole ahead of his team-mate Andrea Dovizioso.
“It was really difficult and really tricky conditions because you didn’t know if the heavy rain can arrive in the middle of the qualifying” Lorenzo said.
“That was why I tried to push to make a good lap in the first two laps. But then we didn’t have enough time … to understand if was better to keep with the same tyre or to stop and change to another tyre.
“So my strategy was to keep with the same tyres … so I decided to slow down a little bit for some laps to warm up the tyres a little bit and then push in the final laps. Probably with new tyres I could be faster but I cannot complain.”
Lorenzo would surely be feeling confident for the race tomorrow if conditions were forecast to be dry, with his team-mate Dovizioso winning here at Silverstone last year and every win of Lorenzo’s so far this season having occurred on a track Dovizioso won at in 2017.
However, the heavy rain forecast will likely change his thinking, especially after he was involved in the FP4 incident that bought out the red flag. He was asked to explain what happened and how he feels about the race tomorrow in these conditions.
“I saw from far there was a lot of water in this braking so I decided to stop and lower the speed on braking to keep riding safe, but even like that I couldn’t stop the bike and I went outside the track and into the gravel, so I could lower the speed enough not to hit the wall.” explained Lorenzo.
“But other riders probably brake a little bit later and they weren’t as lucky as me. The most unlucky one was obviously Tito so we all hope and wish him the best for his injuries. So was a very scary moment and a very unlucky moment for everyone.
“We are a little bit worried all the riders for tomorrow in case of heavy rain, this can be a big problem for the safety of the riders so we hope we have luck with the weather tomorrow and in case of the rain we take a decision for everyone.”
It was confirmed in the press conference that the MotoGP race will be held before Moto3 and Moto2 tomorrow at 11:30am, to try to avoid the worst of the rain. This means warm up will also be bought forward to 9am in the provisional schedule.
