Jorge Lorenzo will miss this weekend's MotoGP race in Germany after a nasty crash in practice. The world champion flipped over the front of his Yamaha and landed on his left shoulder - the same shoulder which had to be operated on two weeks ago. He will now require a further operation and faces a race against time to be fit for the U.S. Grand Prix at Laguna Seca next weekend. "I have decided to go home and recover after today's crash at Sachsenring," said Lorenzo. "I prefer to focus on surgery to fix the plate that was unfortunately bent during the crash. I will try to recover and be back as soon as possible." Lorenzo broke his collarbone in Assen, Holland, and needed eight screws and a titanium plate inserted. Incredibly, he returned 36 hours later and finished fifth in the race. He was fastest in the opening practice at the Sachsenring, but in the second, six minutes in, the Spaniard crashed again. Before Friday's practice sessions Lorenzo had conceded that he was far from 100 per cent and the injury would require further time to heal. But he set the pace, clocking one minute 22.047secs, 0.174secs ahead of title rival current championship leader Dani Pedrosa. In second practice Lorenzo only completed three laps but finished in fourth, with local favourite Stefan Bradl on his LCR Honda the quickest ahead of Honda pair Pedrosa and Marc Marquez, followed by Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi. Britain's Cal Crutchlow had a painful day. He was one of three riders who fell heavily in first practice - all three of them on turn 11. In the second practice, the same corner again caught out the 27-year-old, forcing him to sit out the remainder of the session due to scrapes and burns to his left hand. Crutchlow was sixth quickest in the first session, 0.422secs adrift of Lorenzo, but due to his accidents in the afternoon he finished 19th, almost two seconds down on Bradl.
Lorenzo - that's gotta be painful to bend a plate! Hope he has a speedy recovery, need him to keep the championship interesting
Erm....watchmg it on Eurosport now...think all this may well spoil what was already likely a boring race
Would that be a wise thing to do? I can't imagine he would be much quicker without a decent period of acclimatisation.
Lorenzo has done a Dani Pedrosa - who looked like he'd win a couple of titles but never bounced well. Surely Pedders has got to win this one. All he has to do is keep his cheeky team mate in check. "All" - hmmm. I hope Pedrosa does do the job. He's now a likeable if quiet bloke - not the robot he was originally made out to be when younger. Someone with that amount of talent deserves to win at least one title in the big class.
So pedrosa's gone to hospital and Lorenzo is out of the GP - if there is a god his favourite number is 46. I don't like to see any of them get hurt but this could really close up the top five especially with Laguna next week aswell.
