Jorge Lorenzo took his first pole position since Laguna Seca back in June at Estoril this afternoon, the Mallorcan sealing his fifth pole of the season with a strong performance ahead of tomorrow’s Portuguese Grand Prix. His Fiat Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi meanwhile took his eleventh front row of the season and will start tomorrow’s race from second, with Casey Stoner taking the final front-row slot.

Having topped both practice sessions this weekend, Lorenzo was the clear favourite for pole this afternoon and the 22-year-old looked smooth and comfortable out on track as he made a few last-minute setting changes before the fight for grid spots. With twenty minutes remaining he took the lead and didn’t surrender it for the rest of the session, improving his time several times and never looking in much danger from his rivals.

Rossi had a few problems yesterday but was in better shape today, having improved the balance of his M1 in the hard braking zones. His penultimate lap was good enough to put him second although he was unable to quite match his team-mate’s pace on the softer Bridgestone tyre today. The championship leader is planning a few overnight improvements in order to ensure he is at the maximum for the race.

Tomorrow’s 28-lap race gets underway at the slightly earlier time than usual of 1300 local time, which is 1400 CET.

Jorge Lorenzo – Position: 1st Time: 1′36.214 Laps: 29
“It’s been quite a few races since I’ve had a pole! I was getting a bit worried because doing one fast lap has always been one of my strong points but lately we haven’t been able to be quite competitive enough with the soft tyre. This weekend however everything is working really well and the setting with both tyres is great, so I was able to go out and do some very fast laps. Tomorrow is another day and we know that everyone will be strong, so we will just try and push to the limit and see what happens.”

James Toseland 12th 1.37.823 – 26 laps
“It has been a little bit frustrating today because we decided to change the geomet ry and the wheelbase of the bike, but it meant we had less time to find the ideal set-up. Towards the end of the session we found a good set-up and while 12th on the grid is not bad, I feel I could have been at least one row further forward. That’s frustrating but I’m sure I’ll be starting the race tomorrow in pretty good shape. My lap times on race tyres are good and I’m looking forward to a really good warm-up session because we’ll be making a couple of slight tweaks that I think will give us even better performance. The first corner is always quite difficult at this track with it being so tight, so my plan is to try and stay out of trouble, get my head down and have a really good race for the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team.”

Hello and welcome to my latest diary update. I’m guessing if you are reading this then you must be a Yamaha fan and in that case then I’m sure you enjoyed the Grand Prix of Catalunya! It was an incredible battle and a brilliant show for everyone, I am happy to have been a part of it. Of course I am sad to have lost because I put my heart on my bike and in my career I am more used to winning last-lap fights like that one, but Valentino was maybe a little bit cleverer or a little bit braver than me at the very end and he was able to beat me.

On Sunday night I decided to stay over at the circuit in my motorhome because we had an early start for the test but I went to bed very late. My good friend Ricky Cardús stayed with me and after going for a walk around the paddock, a few games of motocross on the computer and watching the race again in the Yamaha hospitality, before I knew it the time was 2am!

I don’t usually watch the races back and if I’m honest I only watched the last ten laps of this one. I’m not very good at watching myself because I am constantly picking up on the things I need to improve, so I don’t really enjoy it, but this time there wasn’t much I could improve on! I looked really smooth and precise out there – the only mistake I made was in the final corner, when I didn’t close the door tightly enough. I have seen the overtake from every camera angle and the best one is from above – you can see the distance between us and Rossi’s position perfectly. You can see how close to me he was out of the previous bend, which is when he began to prepare himself for the pass. I was also a little wide in the last three corners, which gave him the opportunity to get so close.

It is hard to find the motivation to get back on your bike for a test on the day after a race as intense as Sunday’s because there is nothing at stake but that is what I had to do on Monday. Basically I worked on improving my braking and trying to brake later than I did in the race because that is the area Rossi was able to make time up on me.

It is amazing how much media interest can be created by a race that goes down to the last corner, especially when Rossi is involved. The fact it is him has a lot of influence because he has won so many times, he has so many fans and he is a racing legend. Also, when you have two guys from different countries fighting on the same bike, it creates a lot of excitement and people love to see it.

You could say that situation between Rossi and myself at the moment is a little bit like the battle at the start of the 1990s between Wayne Rainey and John Kocinski. I say that because of the age gap between us and for the fact that they were Yamaha team-mates. One of them had won a lot of titles and the other was new on the scene. In that respect our story is similar but with respect to Kocinski I just hope I can win more races and titles against Rossi than he did against Rainey!

Finishing second in Mugello was good as a win for me after an unbelievable race – it was like a movie! In the morning warm-up I was quite worried because I was slow in the rain, then on the sighting lap I slid off into the gravel pit. All I could think about was making it back to the pits as quickly as possible in case there was still a chance to make the grid and luckily I made it just in time. My team had the second bike ready and I was able to still start from the pole position. On the grid I tried not to think about the crash, I just tried to focus. But then I had a big slide off the line and the first part of the race wasn’t so good for me. My guys did a brilliant job getting the damaged bike ready for the change to slick tyres and after that everything changed. I had a great rhythm and I was able to stay on fighting to the end and take second place.

I have received hundreds of emails to my website congratulating me on my performance at Montmeló – many of them from FC Barcelona fans! It was an honour and a privilege to wear their colours on Sunday and a small payback for the enjoyment I got from watching them win the Champions League final in Rome before the Mugello race. I was there when they won the same trophy in Paris a few years ago but Rome was incredible. The feeling I had there was indescribable – I think you have to have seen your team in a big final to understand it.

I live in Barcelona and as you saw from the television on Sunday the weather here is fantastic at the moment. It means I can take advantage of any free time between training to catch some sun, although I like to be indoors too, playing the ‘Pro Evolution’ football game on my console with friends. I’m also really into ‘Gran Turismo’ at the moment and I’m trying to get my gold licence, which allows you to buy better cars. My best car at the moment is a 550bhp Ford GT and I love driving it around Laguna Seca! I am also involved in some charity work in the city and a few weeks before the race here I visited a hospital, to help open a specialist unit where children suffering with cancer are cared for. When you go to a place like this you realise that life is not always as fair as we want it to be. Some children suffer a lot with their health and to be able to give a little bit of time to them, to try and motivate them is a good thing for me to do. It also makes you realise, if you didn’t already know, that whilst winning is currently the most important thing about my job, it is not the most important thing in the world.

I hope some of those children were able to watch and enjoy my battle with Valentino on Sunday and I hope there will be many more like it, starting at Assen next Saturday!

Best regards

Jorge #99

Fiat Yamaha rider Jorge Lorenzo took a stunning second win of the season in Le Mans today, negotiating varying track conditions and a change of bikes to lead from the first lap to the flag and take the championship lead. It was a doom-laden day for his team-mate Valentino Rossi however as the world champion slid off early on and then had a ride-through penalty to compound his misfortune.

With the track still wet from a rainy morning all riders started the race on rain tyres, with the mechanics readying the dry bikes in pit lane in anticipation of an early change as the track dried out. Lorenzo, starting from second, slipped a place at the start but had passed both Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa by the end of the first lap to take the lead. By lap five a dry line had begun to appear and a few riders chose to make early pit stops to change bikes. The 22-year-old Spaniard however was feeling comfortable and had an excellent pace on his Bridgestone wets and so he stayed out, constantly stretching his lead. In the end he was the last of the front-runners to pit, a gamble which paid off brilliantly as he was by then nearly 34 seconds clear and was able to rejoin the race in the lead on lap 13. Once he had bit of heat in his slick tyres the youngster put his head down and kept his nerve for the remaining 15 laps and he eventually took the chequered flag an impressive 17.710 seconds clear of second-placed Marco Melandri.

It was a day of stark contrasts on the opposite side of the garage, with Rossi forced to make an incredible four visits to pit lane. The Italian was in second behind his team-mate when he elected for an early bike change, coming in to swap onto his second M1 on dry Bridgestones after just five laps. The change went smoothly but the track was still damp in places and he went down on the next lap whilst trying to warm his tyres up. He returned to the pits next time around to swap back onto his other bike, with the rules stipulating that he had to keep one wet tyre with the second bike change, but a problem with his pit-limiter meant he was penalised for speeding on exit and forced to return once again two laps later to perform a ride-through penalty. His final visit to the garage came on lap 11 when he changed once again onto a fully-dry machine, but by then he was some two laps adrift and he finished in 16th.

Lorenzo’s 25-point haul takes him into the lead by one point and he now has 66 points to Rossi’s 65. Stoner has the same points as Rossi but lies third as the Italian has more second places, and Pedrosa follow in the standings. With just nine points separating the top four the next round in Mugello is sure to be a thrilling spectacle.

Jorge Lorenzo – Position: 1 Time: 47′52.678
“Never in all my dreams did I imagine this situation today – winning the race and leading the championship. This season I have been much more calm and careful and so I was really upset after the crash in Jerez because I didn’t expect it! Today has made up for that though. I had a very good pace with both types of tyre and the strategy of our team worked perfectly. I felt happy to stay out on the wet tyres for such a long time and in the end I think we changed at exactly the right time for our race; there was some luck on our side but we were also strong, calm and careful and this paid off. It was the first time in my life that I’ve had to change bikes during the race and I was very nervous, but it went smoothly and I was able to rejoin in the lead. I’m sorry for Valentino because it was bad luck to crash, but now we are nearly on the same points and it seems like the championship is starting again! I want to thank my team because they were very clever today, I’m so happy to be here and to have won a third MotoGP race.”

James Toseland 9th 17 points
“That was pretty eventful and my team did a great job for the change of bikes. I’ve never been in a flag-to-flag race before and it is definitely different. There’s no time to lose concentration in the pits because everything is still happening so quickly. And when you go out on a damp track on slicks you can’t lose focus. The team told me they were going to put ‘OK’ on the board as soon as the first person came in, and though nobody was coming in around me, I felt I came in at the right time. It’s always a risk because there were a couple of corners where it was still quite damp, but for two-thirds of the track you definitely needed slick tyres. My pace on the slicks at the start was really good and I was seventh at one point. But I was on the soft front tyre and it kept getting hotter and hotter and the stronger front harder tyre was what I needed. When I was trying to stay with Colin at the end I just didn’t have the front grip unfortunately. It was nice to be fighting up there again but on the other hand a bit frustrating because I think we could have had a seventh. It’s not the best finish but I really feel we have made a step forward here and my team is working great. As long as we can keep working like this I’m really looking forward to the next few races.”

Herve Poncharal – Team Manager
“Unfortunately a race that promised so much for us ended a little disappointingly, but Colin and James still did Tech 3 proud in our home race, which had extra significance because of our 20th anniversary. We have to think that we missed something big. We’d said that top five would be a dream but we could see from Colin’s brilliant pace in the dry that had he started better when it was wet he could have had another podium in Le Mans. Colin struggled with some issues in the wet but as soon as he switched to the dry bike he was the fastest rider on track at some points and for sure a top three was a possibility. It’s a pity for him but he showed his potential in the dry. I’m really happy with James. The whole weekend he has shown a big improvement compared to the first three races and it was by far the best race of the season for him. We knew he wasn’t going to recover from the problems of the winter so quickly, but step-by-step he is showing his true potential. Hopefully for Mugello we won’t have any rain and the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team can get a strong result.”