Jorge Lorenzo will take no further part in the Dutch TT and says he won’t race in the following rounds at Sachsenring and the Red Bull Ring after this accident during practice at Assen.
The Spaniard – already reeling from the controversy surrounding the bungled crash in Spain that eliminated three of his rivals – fell at high-speed during FP1, caught air in the gravel trap and came down heavily on his back.
Transferred to hospital, Lorenzo has been confirmed with a 'stable' T6 fracture and a 'trabecular fracture' in his T8 vertebra. Though he has been discharged from hospital, he is required to wear a back brace for now.
Back home. Time to recover. pic.twitter.com/It0C8CwRh2
— Jorge Lorenzo (@lorenzo99) June 29, 2019
The Spaniard has already stated he is likely to miss the next two events, which expected to mean Honda test rider Stefan Bradl will be called up to partner Marc Marquez in Germany and Austria.
It’s a stark contrast to Lorenzo’s 2013 Assen MotoGP crash when he suffered a broken collarbone but – remarkably – raced on that weekend, famously qualifying 12th and finishing fifth.
Indeed, this is just the latest in a series of injuries for three-time MotoGP champion Lorenzo, stretching back to a broken toe at Aragon last year.
He then cracked his radius bone of his left wrist due to a technical problem in Thailand, then a fracture to the scaphoid bone in the same wrist during a January training accident, robbing him of the Sepang test.
