Lorenzo victorious on hard compound at Mugello

Jorge Lorenzo won the latest Italian MotoGP round using Bridgestone’s hard front and rear slicks, overcoming Casey Stoner’s early lead of 2.3 seconds. He also set a new lap record at Mugello, while Championship leader Stoner also lost out to Andrea Dovizioso in the final six laps, allowing the Italian to achieve his best result of the season in front of a home crowd. Round seven’s winner Ben Spies got the better of Marco Simoncelli for fourth position, ahead of Valentino Rossi who finished sixth having climbed from 12th on the grid.

As conditions remained fine and dry today, and the track temperature reached 54 degrees Celsius, every rider on the grid opted for the hard compound front tyre for the race. Rear choices were more mixed however, and although the top six riders used the harder rear slicks, tyre choices were split exactly in half throughout the field with eight riders favouring the harder rear and eight using the softer.
 
Hirohide Hamashima – assistant to director, at Bridgestone’s Motorsport Tyre Development Division noted Stoner’s strong early showing and Lorenzo’s quicker finish as illustrating “how different rider and bike packages use our tyres differently, and how important the overall bike, rider and tyre package is in determining race-distance performance and race pace.

“Jorge’s winning race time on this new tarmac and using our asymmetric rear slicks for the first time was 40 seconds faster than the previous race time record, which shows not just good outright pace but also consistency. Jorge rode a very good race today and he and the Yamaha team made the very best of our tyres today in what was a very exciting race.”

Taka Horio, general manager of the Bridgestone Motorsport Department praised Lorenzo and Dovizioso for their management of the tyres, singling out the latter’s game-raising performance in front of his home crowd.