INDIANAPOLIS, IN, SEPT. 12 – Fiat Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo wasn’t overly impressed with the new road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway when he first saw it. After taking part in Friday morning’s wet practice session, he changed his tune.
“I’m getting impressed with the track, because I thought it was more dangerous than I see on the track,” Lorenzo said after posting the seventh-fastest time on Friday morning. “Maybe some walls are so close to the good line, to the track. But in general is not so bad that I thought.”
When asked to compare Indy to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, the site of the Red Bull U.S. GP held annually in July, as far as safety goes, Lorenzo’s answer was surprising.
“Maybe Laguna,” the young Spaniard said.
Like the rest of the MotoGP men, Lorenzo said he thought of the track in two parts – at least when it came to the amount of grip it provided in the wet.
“There is two parts. The first part of the track, the tarmac is new and also there is some water, so much water, and then it’s so difficult to stay on the track because you have to be very careful and maybe straight. You can’t incline [lean]. In the other hand, the other part of the circuit, old tarmac, have so much grip, good grip.”
And the two different grip levels would making picking tires more difficult, he said.
“Yeah, because you need hard tires on the second part and soft tire in the first part, so is difficult to get the compromise.”
Lorenzo wasn’t overly critical of his Michelin rain tires.
In Germany and Brno, mainly Brno, was completely bad,” he said. “But here I think we lost so many time in the first part of the track compared to the Bridgestone, but in the last part maybe we gain something.”
But back to the track, Lorenzo said: “It’s very nice. For my riding style is good because has so manythe turns are very flowing, so it’s nice to ride, very fun.”
Though he did say that the initial set of corners were a bit on the slow side.
“Seems the first few corners very slow. Might be slowest corners of all circuits.”
