Brno MotoGP: Jorge Lorenzo expects faster pace

Jorge Lorenzo played down his impressive return to MotoGP action in Brno this afternoon. 

Back after a two-week summer break, the 23-year-old topped the timesheets with a best time of 1.57.215 comfortably defeating Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa by 0.541s.

But the Fiat Yamaha rider refused to get carried away as he goes in search of a seventh win in ten races in Sunday’s 22-lap Czech Republic Grand Prix.

Today’s lap times were over 0.6s away from lap record pace and any chance of improving times in opening practice were thwarted when light rain started to fall in the final ten minutes.

Lorenzo, who leads Pedrosa by a massive 72-points going into the second half of the season, said:  “It is better to have this advantage than to be half-a-second behind the first rider. But it is not a very important thing because we are still far from the record pace of this track and tomorrow I think the pace will be more or less in 56.5 and 56.3. Most of the riders could improve their lap times at the end in the last ten minutes but it was raining and we had to stop.”

Lorenzo was still content with his early pace as only Pedrosa, factory Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi and Italian Andrea Dovizioso were able to lap inside of a second of the double world 250GP champion.

Planning overnight changes, Lorenzo said: “We will try and make the bike lighter for the change of direction to improve the agility and this is the main thing we have to improve.”