In conjunction with the upcoming 2018 MotoGP World Championship happening at the Sepang International Circuit this weekend, Shell Malaysia organised a very special meet and greet session between Ducati factory team rider, Jorge Lorenzo, and his die hard fans. The event was held at Fountain Cafe, Pavillion KL.
Fans of the motorsports as well as the five-time world champion were able to meet their hero alongside Ducsti Corse Sporting Director & MotoGP Project Director, Paolo Ciabatti. Proud members of the Desmo Owners Club Malaysia (DOCM) also made their way to the event for even more festivities.
Items were signed by Jorge Lorenzo as well as pictures snapped with his loyal followers here in Malaysia but more importantly, this love and support will ultimately assist him in obtaining more positive results this weekend for the Shell Malaysia Motorcycle Grand Prix round at Sepang after missing the past two rounds due to injuries.
In conjunction with the 2018 Malaysian MotoGP round, Shell Malaysia will also be organising yet another Shell Advance Ride Thru service campaign all weekend long. With every purchase of Shell Advance lubricants, fellow bikers will receive a complimentary oil change and free parking! They will also debut their first-ever Shell mobile fuel dispenser for visitors to fuel up with some awesome Shell V-Power Racing.
To know more, head over to www.shell.com.my/motorists/motorsports/motogp.html for more details.
The 2018 MotoGP season just began its three flyaway races where Marc Marquez of Repsol Honda claimed his seventh world championship title in Motegi, Japan last weekend. As the paddock scrambled to get things ready for Australian round happening this weekend at Phillip Island, Ducati announced that Alvaro Bautista will be stepping in for the injured Jorge Lorenzo in the next race. (more…)
Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) hopes to find out more from Jorge Lorenzo about the how the Ducati compares to the Honda RC213V.
HRC Technical Manager Takeo Yokoyama said that he is curious about the Ducati’s strong points when Lorenzo joins the Japanese team from next season.
Repsol Honda factory team rider Marc Marquez is on the way to sealing his fifth MotoGP title, but it doesn’t discount the fact that the Desmosedici GP18 is considered the best all-round bike. It took six victories so far, three each for Lorenzo and his teammate Andrea Dovizioso.
“He (Lorenzo) is a champion, he has ridden many different bikes in the past and he has been always fast. So, I think he can adapt to our bike,” Yokoyama told MotoGP.com.
“I’m really curious to hear about Ducati’s strong points, what is Honda’s strong points – because that’s what he will say.”
Yokoyama continues, “We will not make a completely different bike. We will not make a bike ‘to the right’ for Marc and ‘to the left’ for Jorge. But slightly different is no problem for us.
However, Lorenzo prefers a stable motorcycle especially during corner entry as he rides the traditional “long arc” style, rather than “point and shoot” like Marquez.
“Maybe one of the things that I’m a little worried he would struggle with is the stability of the bike (Honda). I think you can see from TV that the Honda is many times shaking, dancing, jumping,” admits Yokoyama.
“Probably, he’s not the guy who likes to fight with the unstable bike and from our side I guess we need to make the bike a little more stable than we have now. But also from his side, maybe he needs to adapt to a little more unstable bike.
“If we can do this, and if he can do this, I think we will be successful.”
Lorenzo will get his first taste of the Honda in November during the Valencia post-race test.
Ducati MotoGP rider Jorge Lorenzo announced that he will try to race in the next round at the Buriram Circuit in Thailand next weekend.
He made the announcement after another round of medical check-ups on his right foot.
Lorenzo was launched high into the air in a highside at the first corner immediately after the start of the Aragon GP last Sunday. He landed awkwardly on his right foot before being clouted twice (fortunately at low speed) by his own bike.
It was over before it began for @lorenzo99 at the #AragonGP ? pic.twitter.com/yqKHBiTmoT
— MotoGP™? (@MotoGP) September 24, 2018
He was stretchered off the track’s runoff area to the Clinica Mobile where he was found to have suffered a dislocated big toe and compound fracture in the second metatarsal of his right foot.
Lorenzo would go on to blame Marc Marquez for the crash through multiple tweets, although his team members disagreed with him (off the record, of course).
Ducati announced that the latest check-up revealed that he’s “recovering well,” although the foot was “still swollen.”
The triple MotoGP champion will assess if the pain is tolerable to race at Buriram.
Ducati report that the latest check showed Lorenzo’s injuries are ‘recovering.
The 2018 MotoGP Championship is back at San Marino after the upsetting cancellation of the British GP a couple of weeks ago.
With one round fewer, all riders want to do their best at this round to make up for lost points; much more at the top of the leaderboard among Marc Marquez, Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Andrea Dovizioso, set al. Marquez leads the championship by 49 points from Rossi coming into this 13th round.
The Ducatis of Dovizioso and Lorenzo had led the way through FP3 yesterday, but Maverick Vinales went fastest in FP4 ahead of Lorenzo, Dovizioso, Marquez and Rossi. FP4 is the untimed practice session, hence this is when teams and riders look for the optimal race settings.
Marquez was the first who posted a low 1:32 time, but it was Lorenzo who turned the tables on him and set the fastest time of 1:31.763s on his very time lap out the pits. It was the fastest lap record on the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli.
Marquez then rode as hard as he could in a bid to regain the pole position but slid out. He then hopped on a marshal’s scooter and ran through his pits to ride his spare bike out of the pits with just 4 minutes to go in the Q2 session.
The next two spots on the front row became a contention between Dovizioso, Jack Miller, Rossi and Vinalez.
But in the meantime, Lorenzo managed to go even faster and locked out the pole with a record breaking 1:31.629s.
Jack Miller then secured the second spot on the grid with a great ride, while Vinalez charged up from 8th to displace Dovizioso from the 3rd spot.
Marquez was relegated to 5th, Cal Crutchlow suffered another fall in the closing stages to qualify 6th, while Rossi will start from 7th in tomorrow’s race. Malaysian racer Hafizh Syahrin finished 25th after a difficult weekend.
Repsol Honda MotoGP Team, like everyone else knows it when they signed Jorge Lorenzo to partner Marc Marquez. It has always been known that different riders have not only different riding styles but also different personalities. Besides that, it obviously no secret how they demand for the equipment to suit their riding styles.
There have been many times when the manufacturer builds a motorcycle which favours the No. 1 rider – he who finished the previous season in a higher position than his teammate.
As such, many MotoGP pundits are wondering how Marc Marquez and Honda will cope with Jorge Lorenzo when he moves to the team next year from Ducati.
Although the signing of Lorenzo gives Honda two MotoGP title-winning riders in the same team since Eddie Lawson partnered with Wayne Gardner in 1989, Repsol Honda MotoGP team Boss, Alberto Puig admits that it’ll be a challenge to manage the mercurial pair’s relationship.
“Of course, not easy,” he said during the press conference at the Sachsenring, “But if wanted things to be easy, probably we wouldn’t run a team at this level. It’s complicated, but it’s a challenge.”
On the rationale behind signing up Lorenzo, Puig replied, “The understanding is that the team wants to have the best riders, this is the principle. The possibility to sign him up was there and we took it. For Honda it’s important to prepare the best bikes we can and give them to the riders that are faster.”
Speaking about the “best bikes,” Honda will have their hands full in building a bike that suits the riding styles of both riders. Marquez rides a “V-shaped” line: Brakes late, snaps the bike over at the apex and stands it back up early, using the engine’s power to blast away. Lorenzo’s style is the opposite: He uses the traditional “long arc” of braking early and carrying more corner speed, hence he needs the most stability at the turn in and most lean angle.
“We don’t know Jorge, which kind of machine he wants,” said Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) General Manager Tetshuhiro Kuwata, “But of course we will try to adapt to his requirements. And also Marc has a lot of requests to us, and we try to achieve this.”
Kuwata-San rubbished claims that the current RC213V is developed entirely around Marc Marquez’s needs, “Now we are developing for Marc and also for Dani. It’s not only for one rider. So we will continue the same way next year.”
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