P82
MOTOGP
MID-SEASON PROGRESS REPORT
>>JORGE LORENZO
Mr. Perfect meets misfortune.
Calm and smooth, reeling off
one perfect lap after another,
and showing his formerly senior
teammate just how fast a Yamaha
can be made to go, Lorenzo did
everything right until round six at
Assen. Even despite a slump to
eighth in the wet in France.
Then he started saying things
like: "I feel I am riding the best in
my life." This is often a mistake.
The next day he crashed in the
wet and broke his collarbone at
Assen, made a heroic post-operative return to race barely 36
hours after the operation, and
was hailed as a hero.
This appears to have generated a fresh bout of over-confidence, and another crash in Germany that rebroke the bone and
required further surgery.
Lorenzo confounded the odds
by returning to Laguna, and braving it out once again for sixth
place. He lost 15 points to Marquez, but only one to Pedrosa.
For the rest of the season, he
must recapture his calm.
You might say Lorenzo's worst
enemy is himself. That would be
so. If it wasn't for Marquez. Jorge
will be Yamaha's top man again
next year, but it will be even harder than this one.
