Lorenzo Looks to Sweep Spain

Henny Ray Abrams | September 16, 2010

Fiat Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo is trying to do something no one has ever done before.Lorenzo arrived at the Aragon Grand Prix with a 63 point championship lead, 271-208, over fellow Spaniard Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda). Fifty of those points came in victories at Jerez and Catalunya. The Aragon race is a replacement for the cancelled Hungarian Grand Prix, and is expected to remain on the calendar for 2011. If Lorenzo wins Aragon, he will be the first rider to win three races in one country in the same season.Like almost the entire MotoGP field, Lorenzo learned the track on a street bike. (A testing ban prohibited him from testing his M1.) About a month and a half ago, he rode an R1 at the Herman Tilke-designed track and came away with a favorable impression. He said it was “fun with a lot of corners, different corners and a very long straight. So it’s going to be an interesting thing to see how we will arrive and adapt to the track. But for sure it will be a different thing to ride with a real bike, with the M1.”Though he has a yawning points lead with six races remaining, Lorenzo knows it won’t be easy. Pedrosa is having his best year in MotoGP and is riding a two-race win streak into Aragon.”For sure if you want to win the championship you have to fight, you have to ride at the limit in every race,” Lorenzo said. “And you have to fight with the real fighters, riders, and with a very high level, no. So for me, as much as difficult it is, as much as motivated I am.”He’ll also get motivation from having his fan club in attendance at the inaugural Aragon race, “So for sure for our side and my fan club will be the regular consistency, so I’m so happy that Sunday comes.”Even if he wins on Sunday, he still has one race to go to sweep his nation. Valencia, the final race of the year, will mark the first time four GPs have been held in one country.