The Circuit of the Americas is a physically punishing track and Jorge Lorenzo is hoping with all his metronomic heart that Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa will fade during the 21 lap race, but as Yamaha Tech3 rider Cal Crutchlow said after qualifying,”No Yamaha has a chance of winning here,” but practice and qualifying are one thing, and racing is entirely another.
Here’s what Lorenzo who will start on the front row in third said: “What happened in qualifying is more or less what happened in all the sessions: our rivals are much more fast than us in pace and on a fast lap.
Our best position we could do today was third.
Tomorrow in the race anything could happen.
If something strange happens we can fight for the win but in normal conditions third is a really good position for tomorrow.
We hope that the race is going to be better than qualifying and we can be closer to Marc and Dani.
”For Valentino Rossi it will be another uphill battle after qualifying a very lowly 8th, but even worse he is slow, very slow.
Rossi was even slower than during last month’s test in Austin which theoretically should have given him a slighter advantage, instead he’s struggling braking issues that gives him front end problems (shades of two seasons in Ducati).
Realistically the Italian knows that in Austin, a podium is completely out of his reach, because even if he solves his problems in today’s warm-up, he’ll end up battling with the much faster Crutchlow and Stefan Bradl.
“We expected to go better today but we were unable to fix the problem in braking, especially in the first part, and I lose too much time.
We still have tomorrow, we knew that this weekend on this track it could be difficult and in fact it is.
We have to make a good race and try to take as many points as we can,” said Rossi