The Yamaha Factory Racing riders review the first practice session of the Commercialbank Grand Prix of Qatar.

The long winter wait is finally over as the MotoGP™ grid took to the track this evening (Thursday) under the spectacular floodlights of the Losail circuit for the first session of the 2012 season. Yamaha Factory Racing riders Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies took up where they left off in winter testing, putting in quick, consistent and competitive laps from the start.

Texan Spies led for a good part of the session and was the first rider to break under the 1’57" barrier. He finished the session in fourth, 0.508 seconds from top. Team mate Lorenzo was quick to follow, delivering a blistering 1’56.648 in the last minutes to wrap up in second just 0.174 seconds from first.

Jorge Lorenzo:

"A quite good start, the track seems pretty dirty though, we are very far from the lap times of last year but that’s the same for everybody. I feel good, we are in the top close to Casey and we have improvements to come tomorrow from the bike, the track and myself. At the end we made a small change to gain some rear grip on all the corners which helped drop the lap time."

Ben Spies:

"I was happy with tonight, we were generally pretty close to the top. The bike seemed to work pretty well; we made just two small changes to it and kept the same set of tyres on the whole time. We made our fastest lap when the tyre had dropped off with almost race distance on it. I’m quite pleased with how the bike performed. We’ve tested at Sepang, Jerez and here and the bike has been good at all three so I’m happy with the bike, the team and myself. We’ve just got to keep rolling and keep the momentum going."

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