Lorenzo pleased with strong start

The Yamaha rider was quickest for much of Friday practice, before being pushed back to second by Ducati's Casey Stoner in the final moments.

Lorenzo has not yet won at Valencia in any category, so is particularly fired-up for this race even though the title fight is now over.

"This is one of the few places I haven't won in my career so I really want to try," he said.

"Today was very good, I did many laps with a strong rhythm and with a consistent and fast pace. We are feeling strong and we hope we can continue to be competitive.

"Tonight we will look at the data from today and consider how we can make more improvements for tomorrow so that I can try to be on the front row once again."

His team-mate Valentino Rossi, who clinched the championship at Sepang a fortnight ago, was only fourth, but was relaxed about his position.

"It's really nice to be riding as the world champion without having to think about points and now I just want to finish the year with a good race," he said.

Today was not so bad, I'm not happy with fourth but we're not far off and we worked well on the bike. We had some different settings to work on to try to improve our performance at this track and then at the end I was able to do some good laps all together.

"Tomorrow we have quite a lot of work to do, we need to try the harder Bridgestone tyre and try to make another step with the setting, but so far we have done a good job."