Lorenzo: All circumstances are positive

Jorge Lorenzo believes everything is in place to turn his fortunes around at his first European MotoGP outing as a Honda rider, insisting it is “a matter of time” before he is competing with the class’ leading names once again.

The Majorcan has endured a wretched start to life as an HRC employee, a five-month spell that has been pocked by injury, issues adapting to a new machine and a myriad of perplexing mechanical issues.

But the five-time champion’s liking for recent venues – the Termas de Rio Hondo Circuit and the Circuit of the Americas – pale in comparison to Jerez, a track he rates among his favourites, and one where he has amassed three premier class victories.

“Well, I'm used to be solving problems in my career,” he said on Thursday. “But I always come back from the problem, don't lose patience and keep going. I just keep working. It's the same as working and pushing, and good times will come, so it's a matter of time.

“But yeah, it's better to be fit, it's better to not have problems, and it's better to win races and have podiums. But most of the time in life, you are not winning, you are learning or losing. So it's very difficult to most of the time win.

“All the circumstances are positive for me. It looks like it's not going to rain. This grip of the tarmac is fantastic, and if it's new, it's even more fantastic. I'm better, much better than in the winter. I improved my cardio, I am fitter in my wrist.

“I think the bike is faster in terms of power, and I think the bike is better in general. So all the circumstances are very positive. So now we have to go to the track and demonstrate my potential with a good result.”

What, therefore, does he see as thee biggest challenge over the three days ahead?

“New bike,” he said. “Completely different riding style. And I need to go through the same process that I went through at Ducati to be able to be competitive in all the tracks, not only in the good ones for me, but everywhere.

“A lot of things came to me in a negative way until now, starting in Misano. It was injury after injury after injury, six, seven months. I couldn't train 100%, now I am just starting to do that.

“I think I improved a pair of things that will give me some advantage in the future. I'm very strong physically, in terms of cardiovascular fitness. The wrist is still not 100%, but it's much better than Qatar, for example.

"And now the bike is much better. It's a matter of putting the potential we have into results. The track helps, so on paper, everything should be fine.”

It’s hard to pin all the blame on Lorenzo for a start to the year that has yielded just seven points. In Austin his chain came off the sprocket in qualifying before an “electronic” problem prematurely ended his race on Sunday.

“The bike was sent to Japan after the race, to simulate the problem,” he revealed. “It looks like the problem happened again, and they changed something in the electronic side to make the problem disappear in the future.

“I cannot give you any information. I can only tell you it was an electronic problem. I didn't switch it off on purpose.”