Source: Supplied.

Movistar Yamaha’s reigning MotoGP World Champion Jorge Lorenzo was fastest on Friday as MotoGP reached its fifth round at Le Mans, France, overnight. He topped both sessions with an eventual fastest lap of 1m32.830s

Lorenzo led the factory Ducati of Andrea Iannone by 0.339s by the end of session two, while title leader Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda) was third and a further 0.144s in arrears.

“I am very satisfied because from the beginning we started with a good setting and I was relatively fast, quite comfortably,” Lorenzo said. “In the afternoon we improved the bike a little bit and we went even faster with quite a big difference, a couple of tenths, to the rider in second place.

“It wasn’t just one lap, we also had a good pace so it was a very good start to the weekend. Let’s see if tomorrow we can increase the pace a little bit more and prepare for the race to our best capabilities.”

The top five was completed by Pol Espargaro (Monster Yamaha Tech3) and Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati Team), while thetop eight were all within a second of Lorenzo at the top of the charts.

Australia’s Jack Miller (Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS) concluded Friday in 18th on the timesheets, his 1m34.656s near two seconds off the pace of Lorenzo. Still, he’s confident of improvement for Saturday.

“I feel pretty good and I don’t think the final position shows how happy we are with our performance today,” Miller reflected. “The lap times are pretty close and we know we have a lot of margin to improve, but overall it was a good day and we’ll keep working hard to be even stronger tomorrow.”

World champion Johann Zarco (Ajo Motorsport) set the pace in Moto2 practice as points leader Sam Lowes (Federal Oil Gresini) was all the way down in 13th. The Moto3 times were topped by Jerez winner and title leader Brad Binder (Red Bull KTM Ajo).