Jorge Lorenzo kicked off his San Marino Grand Prix weekend in style by recording the fastest ever lap on a motorcycle at Misano during practice on Friday.
In perfect conditions and on a newly resurfaced track, Lorenzo posted a fastest lap of 1:32.871 on his Yamaha bike in the second practice session on Friday afternoon, beating Marc Marquez’s existing record by four-hundredths of a second.
Lorenzo arrives at Misano second in the riders’ championship behind teammate Valentino Rossi, but could be poised to recover the lead should he continue his practice form throughout the weekend.
However, Lorenzo still felt that there was more time to gain as Yamaha trialled some new winglets on his bike during second practice on Friday.
“We have been fast since the beginning of this morning‘s session and I like the new surface of the track, I think it suits my riding style,” Lorenzo said.
“We tried some different settings in the afternoon that I wasn‘t quite satisfied with, but even with a less than perfect set-up we still managed to have a fast and constant pace with both tires. We first rode with the hard rear and used the soft at the end and finished in first place.
“I think that, if we can improve the bike and try the hard tyre, we can make another step forward tomorrow. We are still trying out the winglets to understand the benefit.”
Lorenzo shared top honors in practice with defending champion Marquez, who topped FP1 for Honda earlier in the day before trailing his compatriot in FP2.
“I think it has been a very positive day,” Marquez said. “The track has changed quite a lot from when we came here for the test, because it has much less grip and we have had some problems arise that we didn’t have back then.
“We can be happy, because we obtained a lot of data today and we tried a new swingarm that has helped Honda to understand the direction to take next year. We will not use it because there are some negatives, but there were also some positives to take from it.”
To see the complete classification from practice at Misano, click here.