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Lorenzo on top as final weekend gets underway in Valencia - Malcolm - 05-11-2010 The season finale at Valencia got underway this afternoon and World Champion Jorge Lorenzo ended the day well in command of proceedings, setting a blistering final lap in the second free practice session. His team-mate Valentino Rossi, in his final race weekend for Yamaha, finished the day in ninth after struggling for grip this afternoon. After the bad weather that has blighted the two last rounds, the Valencian sunshine presented a welcome change and raised paddock spirits on this final outing of the year. Lorenzo had a strong morning practice session, coming in second behind Casey Stoner, but the 23-year-old made some significant steps this afternoon and his final lap put him into the 1'32s, two tenths ahead of Stoner in the combined standings. Rossi was fifth in the morning but ran into a few troubles in the afternoon, lacking grip and unable to find the right setting to allow him to use the bike and tyres to their full potential. He was only able to improve his time by a tenth this afternoon but the Italian and his experienced crew will use this evening to look over the data and find a new direction for tomorrow. Jorge Lorenzo - Position: 1stTime: 1'32.690Laps: 39 "Today was a good day. We started strongly from the first moment and I am feeling so confident, plus my bike is working very well here. We need to continue like this tomorrow and make a few small steps forward with our setting. I am so happy to be riding at home again, in front of the Spanish fans here at Cheste as the World Champion. I hope we are strong again tomorrow where I have a very special helmet to show everyone!" Valentino Rossi - Position: 9thTime: 1'33.661Laps: 35 "This morning was not so bad but the afternoon was not great. We weren't able to improve the setting from the morning and we had a few problems; we have some work to do because at the moment we don't have enough grip and the bike is difficult to ride. The times are quite close but we are in still ninth so we need to find a way to improve tomorrow. We will have a look at the data and see what we can come up with tomorrow because for sure we need to improve the grip if we are going to be competitive this weekend. It's a very important weekend, the last for me with Yamaha, so of course we want to try to be at the maximum." Wilco Zeelenberg - Team Manager "A good practice day; the lap time is good, the position is good and Jorge's feeling with the bike is very good too. We need to focus a bit on rear grip because the temperature is quite low. Normally we have a bit of issue on the corner entry but in fact that's fine at the moment and instead we're lacking a bit of grip on the exit of the corner, so that will be our main target for tomorrow. We compared both bikes and tried some different set-ups and it's clear that one is a lot better than the other, which we're pleased about because it's the one we expected it to be. It's the right direction for the race and for 2011." Davide Brivio - Team Manager "This morning we tried some different geometries and settings and then in the afternoon we continued in just one way, but it's clear that we still have some work to do and we have some problems with grip. In the end we stopped a little bit early to consider the situation, and now we will look closely at the data to find the right way forward for tomorrow so that we can give Valentino a bike to allow him to ride how he wants here." Edwards and Spies set fast pace in Valencia Colin Edwards was in fantastic form for the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team today, the American ending the opening day of free practice for the final MotoGP race of 2010 Valencia in third position. The 36-year-old was only 11th quickest in bright and sunny conditions this morning but a series of modifications to improve turning performance with his YZR-M1 machine helped him challenge for the top three throughout the second 45-minute session. Edwards was also able to gain crucial information on the harder compound Bridgestone rear and set his best time of 1.33.466 on the 20th lap of his 23-lap stint in mild but cloudy conditions th is afternoon. Brave Ben Spies also had a positive first day as he produced a performance full of grit and determination today. The 26-year-old is still limping heavily after he was unfortunate to dislocate his left ankle during a crash on the sighting lap ahead of last Sunday's Grand Prix of Portugal at the Estoril circuit. His preparations for the final round suffered an early setback when he crashed in this morning's session at the second corner. But he made a brilliant recovery and in the closing stages of the second session, Spies was in the top three with team-mate Edwards. Despite the ankle injury slightly hampering him while changing gears, Spies eventually finished sixth overall and his best time 1.33.528 was just over 0.4s quicker than his time set this morning. The afternoon session was a closely contested affair with Spies only 0.062s behind Ed wards and the top ten were split by less than one second. Colin Edwards - Position: 3rdTime: 1'33.466 Laps: 42 "I'm really happy to have made such a good start. I was only 11th this morning but knew my guys had a handle on how to improve the bike and this afternoon it just felt so easy. All the problems I've had all year with the bike not turning and running wide disappeared. I could get into the corner hard on the brakes, carry lots of lean angle, open the throttle and the bike would just turn like it should do. It's all too little too late but I didn't feel like I was out there taking a lot of risks and I was nearly six-tenths faster this afternoon. Every lap I did was between 33.4 and 33.6 and that's consistently over half-a-second faster than what I was able to do here last year. I kept the same hard tyre for the whole session and just switched it between the bikes and my best tim e was on the 20th lap, so I'm really happy with the tyre performance too and think I could be in for a really strong weekend to finish the season." Ben Spies - Position: 6th Time: 1'33.528 Laps: 49 "I'm happy with the way today ended because I'm sixth but really close to Colin in third. I felt good this morning before I crashed. I was on the soft front tyre and it is the one I don't like so much. I was happy to make it through the whole session on it but I got a bit too greedy and lost the front going into the second corner. I knew if I'd have swallowed some pride and slowed down or come in for the hard tyre it wouldn't have happened. At least I didn't aggravate the ankle, which is getting better as each day passes. Earlier this week it was really painful and I'm having a couple of issues back-shifting gears. But it is not going to be a problem for the race. I'm having lots of physio and when I'm not on the bike I'm using an ice pack a lot. But after the crash in Estoril and what happened this morning, I needed to have a good session this afternoon just to build up some confidence and that's what I managed. I'm really happy too because my fastest lap was on the 25th lap on the hard rear tyre option, so we've obviously got a good race setting already. Every change we made to the bike made it a bit better, so with a few more tweaks overnight we should be looking even stronger."