How many fans believed that Jorge Lorenzo backed off from chasing Dani Pedrosa once the Repsol Honda rider got past him? A lot, apparently.
With many thinking that the Yamaha rider is content to take second second and keep his lead in the standings, while saving his last pair of engines to get safely through the final three rounds of the season.
However Lorenzo was admnant that he was at the limit and just unable to match Pedrosa’s pace.
“I was completely at the maximum trying to stay with Dani but today we had such different performance on the straights and he was also riding really well.
I tried to stay with him but it was impossible, maybe next time it will be different.
For sure the Championship is closer now, but we are still very competitive and have the chance to win,” said Lorenzo.
This weekend at Motegi almost everyone was having issues with overheating brake discs, and many as we said yesterday were worried that that this would make them would overcook their braking marks and cause safety problems Of all the riders that complained, – Brembo changed calipers and discs several times, only the once again luckless Ben Spies would not finish the race due to these issues – he ran off track on the second lap and hit the barrier.
“I’m incredibly frustrated with today’s result,” said Spies.
We’ve known all weekend that the brakes could be an issue due to the tough nature of the track but I did not expect to have trouble on the second lap.
The team has worked really hard all weekend and we’ve delivered podium pace with the bike so it’s not the result we deserve.
We’ll go to Sepang now and try to put this behind us and hopefully have a trouble-free weekend.
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