Source: Supplied.

A shock first podium for Jorge Lorenzo in his fourth race with Ducati felt better than many wins for the three-time MotoGP world champion.

Lorenzo sliced his way to third behind Repsol Honda’s Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez in an all-Spanish podium on Sunday, capitalising on his front tyre selection.

After qualifying eighth on the grid, Lorenzo made his way into fourth within six laps and then moved by spectacular rookie Johann Zarco into a podium position on lap 12. From there he pressed onto a first podium aboard the Desmosedici.

“I couldn’t have a better present for my 30th birthday,” Lorenzo beamed. “It’s more than a victory and more than a victory with Yamaha. Everyone knows the difficulties to be competitive with the Ducati in the dry, on a difficult track like Jerez has been for us, but Jerez is one of my favourite tracks. We’ve been strong all weekend except in qualifying and I knew I had the pace to fight, maybe not for the podium, but for fifth or sixth.

“Then I started overtaking riders, the race pace was quite slow because of the heat and I stayed behind Zarco, then when I overtook him it was difficult to pull away. In the last laps my tyres were better and I was able to pull away and enjoy this result for me and the team. I said on Thursday it’s a combination of a lot of things, but mainly kilometers. This is a special bike, when I arrived in MotoGP on the Yamaha I was immediately fast because it was a bike made for my riding style, but in other categories it took me a long time to understand certain things and that’s happening now.

“But you don’t have to doubt my riding or mentality, but some people did. They doubted and now they have to eat their words! All riders in this championship are very good and can be in front, especially riders who have won races and titles. It flowed more today, but it’s still not natural for me to use the rear brake. Sooner or later it will be, but I’ve been nine years without using that. You always have to find a way to get the maximum from the bike and every bike has a different way of doing that.”

Ducati Corse general manager Luigi Dall’Igna commented: “Today we did a great job and for us to score a podium here at Jerez was very important. We know we still have a lot of hard work to do and already from tomorrow here at Jerez we’ll be testing the developments we have prepared, because the gap to the winner is still quite big. Jorge did a great race, fully deserving his first podium for Ducati.”

Lorenzo’s rostrum has now bumped him up to ninth in the championship standings following an 11th-place finish in Qatar, DNF in Argentina and ninth in the Americas.