Lorenzo’s condition ‘a bit worse than expected’

Jorge Lorenzo was slightly downcast at the close of the first day of MotoGP free practice at Valencia, as his injured left wrist continued to cause him issues when manhandling Ducati’s GP18.

The Majorcan ended the day 19^th on the combined timesheets, his best lap 2.015s slower than that of overall pace setter Marc Marquez.

“Honestly [my left wrist is] a little bit worse than I expected yesterday,” he said. “I still… it’s not the same to do a normal life, you don’t feel so much pain, even if I don’t have full mobility, but I can grab something.

“Another thing is the pressure, the pressure and heaviness of the MotoGP bike, especially on braking. It’s a lot and still the injury is not healed completely, though I'm a lot better than Sepang.

“Probably wet condition helped me, because the rain you have more or less half the pressure than you’ve got in the dry. But for the negative part is more easy to crash. We’ve not completely healed from the injury. The idea to crash is not very welcome.”

Does this mean he approaches Sunday’s race with Tuesday’s first outing with Honda in mind?

“I worry about myself,” he said. “About my physical condition. Because I know the injury is not healed completely. In normal conditions you go much more careful in the wet than the dry, because you don’t want to crash.

“When you don’t feel completely strong and completely well, you are even more so. It doesn’t depend on if it’s the last race with Ducati or… It’s just a subconscious thing.”

On his physical preparation from Sepang to Valencia, he added, “Well I always take profit of all the hours I have during the day. Normally I do a double session every day, it doesn't matter how I am.

“But obviously it’s not the same when you are injured you cannot lift weights. You cannot do cardio, just on the bicycle. But especially weights, so you lose muscle mass.

“So my arm is like a little girl. You lose power, but will regain in the future when I come back again to the weights.”