MotoGP: Lorenzo – ‘I considered stopping’

Jorge Lorenzo has admitted that he considered pulling into the pits during Sunday’s Dutch TT at Assen, after experiencing what he described afterwards as one of the worst races of his career.

Struggling with front tyre grip and feeling, the reigning world champion spent most of Sunday’s red-flagged two-part race in last place, only improving through the field as others fell off in front of him.

“In the first race I was in 19th place and the last rider. I was even thinking about stopping because the conditions on the track were terrible, but I kept riding and they stopped the race.

“We restarted the race with less water on the track and a soft rear tyre and, though I was one of the last ones and there were many crashers, I gained more confidence than I had in the first race.”

In fact, the only ray of sunshine for Lorenzo among the rain was that he managed to make it to the chequered flag in tenth, picking up valuable championship points over teammate and rival Valentino Rossi.

“These are important points for the championship; in the first race I would not have scored any. Marquez also scored a lot of points today, but Rossi, who could have recovered points, lost a lot. Ultimately we were able to save a difficult weekend.

“Before Le Mans we were also around 24 points behind and now we are more or less in the same situation, after two difficult races, so we have to think positive and keep in mind that we still have a lot of races to recover the gap to Marquez.”