LORENZO’S PACE IN PRACTICE

should have told him the best he could hope for was second, especially after an unnerving high-speed fall during morning warm-up, but that didn’t stop him from having a go at destabilising Marquez from the start. The world champ stormed ahead into the first turn, only to run wide and gift Marquez the lead. Ten corners later Lorenzo made another wild stab on the downhill run into the hairpin. Again he swept majestically into the lead, only to run way wide again and have Marquez, Rossi and Dovizioso go past.

With a full fuel load on board, Lorenzo was locking the front on the brakes and from then on he was tentative into corners, anxious not to make the same mistakes that would bring down so many others. And yet by lap three he was into third, ahead of Espargaro the elder and Rossi, who then lost the front at the downhill turn two.

“My problem was I burned the clutch at the start, something like the trouble we had in Argentina,” said Rossi. “The first two laps I could only open the throttle a maximum of 50 per cent, to cool the clutch. The feeling with the clutch was coming back, then, maybe, I lost concentration, tried a bit too hard and made a mistake. But apart from the crash we were competitive here, so we must stay concentrated because we can be very strong.”

Meanwhile, Marquez was already 1.5 seconds out front as Lorenzo sneaked past Dovizioso through the serpentine run from turn two to nine. It was just as well the champ got ahead, because at turn one the very next lap Pedrosa lost it on the brakes and cannoned into the rider ahead of him, which had been Lorenzo, but this time was Dovizioso. The impact was huge and