Jorge Lorenzo once more proved why he is the world champion as he cruised to provisional pole position for the 250cc Portuguese Grand Prix.The 20-year-old Spaniard lapped the Estoril circuit in 1:40.480 seconds on his Fortuna Aprilia, which smashed Roberto Locatelli's qualifying record of 2006 by almost a second.
Lorenzo spent the first 20 minutes involved in a great scrap for pole with Andrea Dovizoso, Mika Kallio and Hiroshi Aoyama.
It soon became clear though that he and Scot Honda rider Dovizioso had a little bit more than the rest as they brought the times down to the 41.6s and swapped places three more times before the half hour mark.
But in the final 15 minutes Lorenzo laid down his marker with a couple of blistering laps that Dovizioso could not match, no matter how hard he tried.
The Italian eventually ended up 0.424 seconds slower with the KTMs of Kallio and Aoyama completing the provisional front row.
Alvaro Bautista was fifth quickest, one place up on his Aspar Aprilia team-mate Alex de Angelis, who is currently Lorenzo's closest rival in the championship, albeit 54 points adrift with only five races remaining.
Tom Luthi and Julian Simon put their Caffe Latte Aprilia and Repsol Honda at the back of row two and Hector Barbera and Yuki Takahashi completed the top ten for Toth Aprilia and Scot Honda.
11th, after a crash at turn four, went to Gilera rider Marco Simoncelli, while Spaniard Efren Vasquez was another to lose it, this time at turn eight on his Blusens Aprilia.
Irishman Eugene Laverty was 23rd fastest for LCR Honda with Britain's Dan Linfoot one place back on his Sicilia Aprilia.
British wildcard Luke Lawrence was one of four riders to fail to qualify within the 107 per cent rule. The McDonalds Aprilia rider needs to find over two seconds in Saturday's second session to make it onto the grid.
No comments:
Post a Comment