Reigning MotoGP world champion Jorge Lorenzo watched any last hopes of retaining his title slip away at Silverstone after a setup gamble for the British round backfired badly on the Movistar Yamaha man.
Lorenzo and his crew decided to change his bike to run harder in a carbon copy of a move that paid off in 2012 but four years later all it did was remove rear grip from the Spaniard’s M1 and he could only finish in eighth place, 20 seconds behind winner Maverick Vinales
“We made a gamble today with the setting, went harder with the suspension because in 2012 we did in the warm-up and this worked. But today it didn't work and we lose rear grip and from the warm-up lap I saw that I had a little bit less rear grip,” Lorenzo said.
“From the first lap I saw that Pedrosa had much more corner speed, much more drive and it was really difficult. I was in the 2'02.3 low, more or less keeping Dovizioso and the second group in my eyes, but more or less in the middle of the race, lap nine, I began to feel big degradation on the rear tyre. That was when Aleix passed me and I started to lose from Aleix and the second group.”
It means Lorenzo now has a whopping 64-point gap to Marc Marquez at the top of the table, almost insurmountable given the Repsol Honda’s man new attitude - which wasn’t clearly on display on Sunday.
