Lorenzo: Assen win tougher than Britain

The 23-year-old has been largely dominant in MotoGP since his FIAT Yamaha team-mate and championship rival Valentino Rossi was injured during practice for the Italian Grand Prix last month - though he was beaten to the race win by Pedrosa at Mugello.

Since then Lorenzo took pole for both the rounds in Britain and Holland and swept to an unchallenged victory at Silverstone.

At Assen though, Lorenzo was forced to ride hard for the entire duration, though led throughout to win by 2.9s from Pedrosa.

"This race had been a little bit more difficult than Silverstone," said Lorenzo. "More than a little bit... because Dani has been so fast with the soft tyre.

"We went with the harder one so I knew I had a little bit of an advantage at the end of the race. Also Casey [Stoner] was very fast at the beginning.

"So we tried to keep the concentration up during the first 10 laps and it was a difficult job."

Despite the pressure Lorenzo said he believed all along that his decision to start the race with a harder rear tyre than his rivals was the correct one.

"I was confident that my harder Bridgestone tyre would help me later on and this was the case, so we made the right choice," he said. "It wasn't easy though and at the end I was sliding quite a lot, in fact I made a mistake at the chicane and nearly crashed so I was quite glad to finish!

"I am really happy that I have won here in all three classes because it's such a historic place and the football I had in Parc Ferme was to celebrate this hat-trick."

Lorenzo now commands a 47-point lead at the top of the championship from Pedrosa, with six rounds of the season completed.