Moto GP: Lorenzo, Pedrosa and Stoner in Assen showdown

Jorge Lorenzo Assen GP winner

Jorge Lorenzo put in another textbook performance at Assen today, leaving his rivals trailing as he led from the front to win the 80th Dutch TT and take his fourth victory of the season.

Lorenzo had looked the man to beat all weekend after topping both practice and qualifying and he got a great start from pole position and quickly pulled out a second’s gap, but by lap five Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner were looming large behind him and for a few laps it looked as if a tense three-way battle was in the offing.

Jorge Lorenzo – 1st, Time: 41’18.629
“This race was a bit more difficult than Silverstone because Dani was so fast with the softer tyre early on in the race and I had to really keep my concentration to stay in front of him at that point. I was confident that my harder Bridgestone tyre would help me later on and this was the case, so we made the right choice. It wasn’t easy though and at the end I was sliding quite a lot, in fact I made a mistake at the chicane and nearly crashed so I was quite glad to finish! ”

Dani Pedrosa managed to put straight a weekend that had become very difficult to finally claim a hard-fought second place. With many problems in the practices, the Repsol Honda Team rider surprised both his own and others by performing at a level that almost took him to victory. His team-mate Andrea Dovizioso had more problems than expected and finished in a well-deserved fifth place.

Dani Pedrosa Assen

Dani Pedrosa – 2nd 2,935 sec behind

“Well first of all I have to say I’m surprised by this result because, I tell you, in practice we had a lot of problems and we tried so many things that didn’t work, so I wasn’t expecting to get second today or to have this pace. For the warm-up we found something which gave us a better lap time and my rhythm improved a lot, which gave us the chance to fight in the race. I knew with the soft rear Bridgestone tyre that I would have more of an advantage in the first part of the race and so I pushed really hard from the start to catch up. But then I began losing a little bit of time in the first section of the circuit and lap-by-lap we lost touch. Anyway, this is a good result for us and I’d like to say thanks to my team because they never gave up. I’m back into second in the World Championship but actually I’m more pleased with second in this race. Now we go straight to Catalunya for my home GP and I hope we can have a good race there too”