Lorenzo plays down practice struggles

Having won the last three rounds, the championship leader was expected to be at the forefront again today, but ended the session 0.7 seconds down on pacesetter Dani Pedrosa's Honda.

But Lorenzo (Yamaha) said he always knew he was not going to dominate every weekend.

"This is racing, you can win, you can lose," he said. "Other riders have the opportunity to win. This is the reality. Sometimes you are fast, sometimes you struggle a little bit more - and today we struggled more. So we must be patient, not crash and try to improve our lap time."

The Spaniard felt that as well as his set-up not being perfect yet, his riding had also been below par today.

"Today the problem was the front, and also myself, I think I didn't ride so well," Lorenzo said. "I will try to improve for tomorrow, especially on the front, and try to improve my riding style.

"I try to always be very concentrated and today I didn't make a mistake, I didn't crash, I didn't make some big show on the bike. I was fast at the beginning, I was leading the practice, but I didn't improve my lap time from the middle of practice to the end.

"I think we have quite a big margin of improvement for tomorrow. Let's see if it's going to be real."