Lorenzo says "aggressive" Marquez compromised his race

While Andrea Dovizioso delivered Ducati its first back-to-back race victories since 2010 at Barcelona, Lorenzo finished fourth behind the two Repsol Hondas, 9.6 seconds behind his teammate.

After leading for the first time for Ducati at Mugello, Lorenzo also enjoyed a spell heading the pack in Spain, following on from securing his first front-row starting position of the year on Saturday.

But the three-time premier class champion lost his advantage to Marquez on lap 6 at Turn 10, in a move which also allowed Dani Pedrosa and Dovizioso to pass.

From there, Lorenzo dropped to as low as eighth, but made up ground in the closing laps as those ahead began to suffer from tyre degradation, and ended up in fourth.

“I could stay half a second ahead of Marquez fairly easily, then he arrived aggressively [at Turn 10], and I had to lift the bike,” said Lorenzo. “If I didn't lift the bike, we would have both crashed."

“I was overtaken by Pedrosa and others, I started to ride worse, the tyres wore out and I had to think about not crashing.

“When those ahead of me started to lose grip, and started to drop their pace, I recovered.”

Lorenzo, who ran hard tyres front and rear, denied that pushing to lead the early stages of the race caused him problems later on, highlighting the fact he had more grip than his rivals later on.

“I don’t think starting strong penalised me, because in the closing laps I had more grip than [Johann] Zarco, [Jonas] Folger or [Alvaro] Bautista,” said the Spaniard.

“I managed to save the tyres and at the beginning I could have lapped three tenths faster. On the right-handers I was pretty gentle on the gas, as I believe the others were.”

He added: “I still do not ride as I would like. It’s getting better little by little, but it’s not easy for me. If you don’t feel confident with the bike, it’s difficult to do great races.”

Additional reporting by German Garcia Casanova