Defending
Jerez winner
Jorge Lorenzo finish day one of his home 2012 Spanish
MotoGP in third place, just over one-second from Honda's Dani Pedrosa.
Yamaha's world championship leader joined most of his rivals in sitting out the mixed morning session, then - like most riders - spent the afternoon hunting for grip from the rear as the wet tyres quickly degraded on the drying track.
“This morning we couldn't practice and this afternoon it was wet and then finally drying at the end,” explained Lorenzo. “In these conditions we are not so good because the middle of the tyre is dropping a lot, after eight or ten laps we don't have any more grip so we have to slow the pace.
“We have to work on that for Sunday if the conditions are going to be the same as today. If it rains with a lot of water then that's one story but if it's like today we are not the fastest so we need to gain some grip on the rear.”
“Difficult to say if we learnt much, we'll have to wait until tomorrow and hope for either a completely wet or dry session,” added team manager Wilco Zeelenberg. “Today was in the middle, I wouldn't say useless but nearly useless.”