Jorge Lorenzo has been in plenty of on-track battles, and late in races, during his decorated MotoGP career. He's won plenty of them, too.
But his fight with Loris Baz towards the end of the 2017 Qatar Grand Prix will have been about as inglorious and sobering as they come. This isn't a shot at Baz, but no matter how low Ducati and Lorenzo tried to set the bar, fighting for 11th place with a satellite rider on a two-year-old bike is not what they had in mind for the Spaniard's first weekend in red.
"Disappointing," was Lorenzo's summary post-race, having repassed Baz with three laps to go to finish 11th by less than a second.