The Mallorcan, who celebrates his 21st birthday tomorrow, fractured a bone in his left ankle and caused severe trauma to various parts of his right ankle and foot after a spectacular highside just 11 laps into Friday's opening practice session.
But Lorenzo returned to the Fiat Yamaha garage on Saturday morning, completing 21 laps on his way to 14th in final free practice. Having missed out on valuable track time, pain was not the only problem as Lorenzo's team faced a difficult task to set the bike-up with limited time and data to work with.
However, after finding a comfortable race set-up, Lorenzo felt able to push as hard as his injuries allowed on both of his Michelin qualifying tyre runs - handing him a hard earned fourth place, despite a massive scare when his M1 began bucking wildly on the exit of the final turn with 20 minutes to go.
"The way I felt yesterday, I couldn't even imagine a result like this today. In fact it was all I could do to believe that I would be able to ride at all," said Jorge, who heads into Sunday's race holding the joint world championship lead with
Dani Pedrosa. "This result is amazing for me, as good as my other pole positions, and it's given me a lot of confidence despite the pain.
"Now I have to take care and tomorrow I will just try to do the best I can; who knows what can happen in the race?" continued the Estoril winner. "I have a lot of pain in both feet and ankles and it's difficult to change down with the left and to change direction with the right, but I showed I am able to do it.
"Yesterday's crash was big, probably the biggest of my career, but I think I was actually quite lucky not to have worse injuries," reflected Jorge, who will be doing his best to keep his 100% podium record alive. "The doctors at the clinic are working very hard to help me and now I will go back there for more treatment. Hopefully I will be feeling better again tomorrow and we will do what we can, rain or shine!"
