Lorenzo: Slow pace worse than crash

The 21-year-old Spaniard put his Yamaha on pole position at Jerez, but made a bad start and ran fourth for most of the race before losing the front end of his M1 at the Angel Nieto bend while in pursuit of Casey Stoner's Ducati.

Prior to his accident, Lorenzo had been unable to get within half a second of his team-mate Valentino Rossi's lap times after he failed to set his bike up correctly for the track conditions.

"Unfortunately today the temperature meant that our setting did not work in the same way [as in qualifying] and at the moment we don't understand why," said Lorenzo. "This is really more disappointing than the actual crash."

Lorenzo admitted that the cause of the crash, which came on lap 22 after he had reduced a four-second deficit to Stoner to a little under a second, was purely rider error.

"Fourth position wouldn't have been so bad but when you're in front of your fans, at home with so much adrenalin on the bike of course you try to do the maximum," he added.

"I could see that the podium was possible and maybe the right thing would have been to go more gently and not push so hard in that moment, but I always want to do my best. Then I made a mistake and I threw all my good work away."

His failure to score points meant that Lorenzo dropped from the lead of the championship to third, 24 points behind winner Rossi.