Two weeks after his victory at Mugello, Jorge Lorenzo has made it two in a row by winning the Catalan GP at the Montmeló circuit.
The rider from Mallorca, who started from pole, moved into the lead of the race on lap 2 when he passed Honda’s Marc Marquez, and then firmly held onto that position right until the chequered flag, finishing over four seconds ahead of his future teammate.
Coming in third and continuing his own streak, was Yamaha’s Valentino Rossi, who took his third consecutive third-place finish in the 2018 MotoGP World Championship.
Lorenzo, who is set to make the switch to Honda at the end of the season, was ecstatic with his winning form aboard the Ducati: “Today’s win was really fantastic! We showed that we can win not only by entering the first turn in first place, but also by recovering and overtaking the others. It was actually a complicated race because I got off to a bad start and lost a lot of metres to Marquez, but I told myself that the race was long and I had to keep calm. It wasn’t too difficult to take Marc, because I had that little bit extra under braking, but he stayed pretty close to me right down to the flag. Now we’ve got a very competitive package and I think that this is the most complete Ducati bike of all time.”
The race overall was messier than we’ve come to expect from the top tier of the sport, with plenty of crashing action decimating the middle order.
Hafizh Syahrin (of Monster Yamaha Tech 3) had a nasty crash on the exit of Turn 4 after it looked like he could earn a top ten finish, thankfully the Malaysian was ok. Alex Rins’ difficult weekend continued in the race, with the Suzuki mounted Spaniard retiring on lap 12. Aussie Jack Miller was another retirement on lap 18, with Tito Rabat (Reale Avinita Racing) having to leap off his Ducati after it caught fire heading into Turn 1 – rider ok, bike not so much…
The MotoGP circus will return to action for the Motul TT Assen round, held at the TT Circuit Assen from June 29th.
