Jorge Lorenzo adamant his MotoGP title defence isn't over

The Yamaha rider led Marquez by 10 points after winning the Italian Grand Prix in late-May, but has scored just seven points to the Honda man's 65 in the three subsequent races.

At Barcelona, Lorenzo battled with front tyre graining and was fifth when taken out by Ducati's Andrea Iannone, but he was well off the pace at Assen and the Sachsenring - where he has been injured in the past - especially in mixed conditions.

Despite Marquez now having a lead that is nearly the equivalent of two race wins, Lorenzo says it is not over.

"The championship is not finished until we don't have mathematical options to win it," he said after finishing a distant 15th in the German Grand Prix on Sunday.

"Everything can happen. As we saw with Marc, he was very brave in all of the conditions and very fast in all of the conditions, he crashed in the warm-up and he was lucky not to get injured.

"We saw in other championships that the leader with a big advantage can lose the championship so we have to be positive and still believe it's possible.

"Firstly we have to recover the confidence, we have to recover the good results that we don't have now.

"The last three races were very bad for us. For different circumstances, but we just had little problems in these races."

Lorenzo acknowledges that he has work to do on Michelin's tyres, and says his history with Assen and Sachsenring might have had "a little bit" of an affect.

After the summer break, the Red Bull Ring hosts the next round on August 12-14.

"I hope I can do something to improve as much as I can out of the MotoGP world, to improve my confidence," he said.

"But I am seeing that it's not easy for me, my riding, to quickly gain the confidence with these tyres.

"I have to do something. But especially the cold conditions and the wet conditions are, at this moment, the worst circumstances for me.

"After the last few grands prix I want to take a few days resting and recovering and forgetting a little bit these races.

"But after four or five or six days I will come back training, physically and maybe do something to improve in these conditions in the future."

LEADING CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS