Lorenzo says warm-up crash helped him finish second

The reigning MotoGP champion secured his best finish since his victory at Mugello with the runner-up spot behind a dominant Marc Marquez, Lorenzo coming out on top against Rossi in the closing laps.

It followed a last-minute switch by Lorenzo to the hard option rear tyre, which came as a result of a crash at Turn 8 during the morning warm-up session.

The Spaniard explained this made him do multiple sighting laps on his way to the grid as he assessed the damage on the machine he had crashed, which helped him to decide to go with the hard tyre.

Asked about the warm-up crash after the race, Lorenzo said: “Sometimes a bad situation or a bad thing makes a good thing, no? That’s what happened when I crashed.

“This make me do two warm-up laps, one with the bike I crashed with the hard rear tyre, and one with the soft rear tyre.

“And finally these two laps, the hard tyre suddenly give me a good confidence, my instinct told me I need to use this one.

“So this crash gave me for sure the possibility to have this race, and I was delighted to finish on the podium because I didn’t expect that, I expected to finish sixth or seventh.”

Lorenzo now finds himself only 14 points behind teammate Rossi in the fight to be runner-up in the points, with Marquez 52 in the clear.