Record lap launches Lorenzo to pole position at Misano; Rossi on P3

Jorge Lorenzo will start on pole position for tomorrow’s San Marino and Rimini Grand Prix after the Movistar Yamaha MotoGP rider set a new Misano Circuit Best Lap record of 1’32.146 to finish one-tenth of a second of his closest rival, Repsol Honda Team’s Marc Marquez.

Having finished yesterday’s practice sessions as the quickest rider, Lorenzo found extra pace during qualifying and his best lap time in Qualifying Practice 2 beat the previous pole position lap record at Misano by almost eight-tenths of a second. In QP2 Marquez set a time of 1’32.252 to qualify in second place and split the Factory Yamaha riders as clocking the third quickest time was Valentino Rossi, who circulated the Misano circuit in his Yamaha YZR-M1 in a time of 1’32.358. All riders that qualified on the front row used the combination of the medium compound rear and hard compound front slick to set their quickest times.

The Misano circuit was once again subjected to warm and dry conditions today with a peak track temperature of 44°C recorded during qualifying. The favourable conditions allowed extensive testing of the different slick options available and certain compounds of the front and rear slicks firmed as the favourite race tyre choices for tomorrow’s twenty-eight lap race. For the front tyre, the grid looks set to be fairly evenly split between choosing the medium and hard compound front slicks, although the majority of the factory option riders look set to race the hard front slick. Rear tyre choice appears to show a considerable preference for the medium compound rear slick, although a number of open class riders look set to race the soft compound rear slick. A good sign for a close race tomorrow is that all slick options have shown the potential to provide consistent performance over race distance on the new Misano asphalt, with many riders able to lap under race record pace during their race simulations.

The final chance for the teams and riders to confirm their setup and tyre choice for the race will be the morning Warm Up session at 0940 local time (GMT+2) before the 2015 edition of the San Marino and Rimini Grand Prix starts at 1400.

“After an initial period of familiarisation with the new asphalt yesterday, today more work was made on refining tyre choice for the race and two front and rear slick options have shown to be well suited to the new track surface. The medium and hard compound front slicks are both working well at Misano, the medium compound option reaches its optimum operating temperature quicker and has better turn-in performance, while for others, particularly the factory Honda and Yamaha riders, the hard compound offers better braking performance and is more consistent. Unless track temperatures increase significantly tomorrow, I don’t think we’ll see any factory riders use the hard compound rear slick as in the track temperatures we have had this weekend, the soft and medium compound rear slicks are performing better. Generally, tyre performance during race simulations in FP4 was quite consistent so we hope to see a strong pace throughout the whole twenty-eight laps in tomorrow’s race.”