Movistar Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo has admitted a lack of confidence in the wet held him back in the opening MotoGP free practice session in Austin and needs to work on rear grip this afternoon.
The former world champion badly broke his collarbone at Assen in the rain two years ago and has not been a confident wet-weather rider ever since but says he will try to do something about it in FP2. He ended the opening session in ninth place, two seconds off the pace.
“This was the first time on the wet here at COTA so it was interesting to see the bike’s behavior and the grip under such conditions. To be honest it was not so bad, the only problem is that in some corners of the circuit there are some wet patches that make our lives a little bit difficult,” said Lorenzo.
“I was the slowest Yamaha rider so I need some time to arrive to the top level. We need to improve a bit the rear grip and we’ll use FP2 this afternoon to work on this. The weather forecast has not good news for us but anyway the weekend is very long and let’s see what happens tomorrow and on Sunday.
“I am a bit cold and let’s see if I get better later in the day. It’s been hard to be competitive today because I had no confidence on the wet so we need to improve in these conditions. We are going to try something in the afternoon to improve, although I think we are not so far from our competitors.”
