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Lorenzo "doesn't care" about title amid current form slump

Reigning MotoGP champion Jorge Lorenzo says he doesn't care about his diminishing chances of winning the title, as he needs to solve his pace struggles first.

Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha Factory Racing

Photo by: Yamaha MotoGP

Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Valentino Rossi, Yamaha Factory Racing, Marc Marquez, Repsol Honda Team
Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha Factory Racing

Lorenzo's title defence took another hit at Silverstone as he gave up more points to runaway leader Marc Marquez, finishing eighth to Marquez's fourth.

This leaves Lorenzo with six races to make up a 64-point deficit to Marquez - and a 14-point deficit to teammate Valentino Rossi.

Asked about his title hopes after the British Grand Prix, Lorenzo said: "I don't care about the championship because we are not competitive, we are losing a lot of points.

"Always somehow, always happens something for us to lose the points in the last [few] races.

"Let's see at Misano - in the dry we're okay to be one of the fastest, to fight for victory. And if it rains, to try to make another step forward."

Settings "gamble" didn't pay off

With Yamaha struggling for pace in the dry at Silverstone, Lorenzo and his crew gambled on making his suspension harder ahead of the race in a bid to find speed, but the decision did not pay dividends.

"We made a gamble today with the setting," Lorenzo explained. "Because we wanted to try it in warm-up, but in the rain we couldn't try it.

"In the end, we made this gamble to make the suspension harder, because in 2012 we made it in the warm-up and it worked. But today it didn't work.

"It didn't act better on the bumps, even worse, and also we lost rear grip - from the warm-up lap I felt I had less grip and on the first lap, when I was behind [Dani] Pedrosa, I saw he had much more corner speed, much more drive, that it was difficult."

Lorenzo also said that his pace was further dented by a rear tyre issue that reared its head in the latter half of the race.

"Somehow I was in the 2m3s low, more or less keeping [Andrea] Dovizioso and the second group in my eyes," recalled the Spaniard. "But in the middle of the race, on lap nine, I started feeling big vibration on the rear tyre, similar to when you feel that some piece is gone from the tyre.

"I had to reduce drastically my pace, from 2m3s low to [2m]4.5s, [2m]4.7s. That's when Aleix [Espargaro] passed me and I started losing the second group and Aleix."

Additional reporting by Oriol Puigdemont

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