"It changed the handling completely, because there was no stability at the front - it was free to do what it wanted. It made the bike really difficult to control, and you could crash if you ride without a steering damper. But I have to keep going to the very end."
It was a heart-breaking finish to a weekend which had seen the 17-year-old become the first Briton to claim pole position in the 125cc class for 36 years, since Chas Mortimer in 1972.
In the race warm-up his number one bike had already failed to run with an engine problem, and he had had to swap to his spare machine.
Sunday pm - Lorenzo and Toseland Quickest Through the Corners
Jorge Lorenzo and
James Toseland,
MotoGP's sensational newcomers, will approach tonight's race with the confidence of knowing that each of them was the fastest rider through two of the Losail circuit's four timed sectors during qualifying.
Toseland, on the Tech 3 Yamaha with the conventional valve-spring engine, was quickest through sectors one and two on the 16-turn, 3.34-mile circuit, even though his bike clearly lacks power compared to most of his rivals. On his best qualifying lap he cut through the first sector in 24.849 seconds, just 23 hundredths of a second better than Lorenzo, on the latest pneumatic-valve Fiat Yamaha. In sector two Toseland bettered Lorenzo by 0.109 seconds.
Lorenzo was able to get through sector three quickest, his 27.981 seconds beating
Casey Stoner on the Marlboro Ducati by 0.215 seconds. Lorenzo also muscled fastest through sector four, which leads onto the power-sucking main straight, recording 31.578 seconds, just sixteen hundredths quicker than Stoner in second place.
This was, of course, on Michelin qualifying rubber and not the harder tyres that bikes will be wearing for the race. But the illustration shows how riders literally are competing to shave hundredths of a second from lap times in this era of 800cc bikes.
And it also poses the question: what might Toseland have done if he'd had the lustier pneumatic-valve Yamaha motor?
Sunday pm - What to Look for in Today's Race
So what can we look forward to in this debut night MotoGP race, after
Jorge Lorenzo, James Toseland and
Colin Edwards produced the first all-Yamaha front row since the senior class went to three-rider rows in 2004?
