Jorge Lorenzo stormed out of the gates to clinch a stunning and untouchable victory in his last appearance for Yamaha. After a perfect qualifying session in Valencia on Saturday, Lorenzo arrived at the circuit on Sunday morning feeling confident about his pace and it showed in the opening laps.
The Mallorcan stormed into the first corner to take the holeshot before creating an over 0.6s gap to the riders in his pursuit. He was the only rider to drop a 1‘36s opening lap before getting into a consistent rhythm of 1‘31s.
The home-hero maintained an advantage of more than four seconds over his closest rival for most of the race, but decided to slow down his pace in the final stages to end his Yamaha career with a textbook win and a 1.185s margin over second placed rider, Marc Marquez.
Lorenzo‘s run-away victory secured him third place in the Rider Championship standings, highlighting his protagonist status while the Movistar Yamaha MotoGP Team secured the 2016 FIM MotoGP Team‘s Title with 482 points, 28 points ahead of rivals at Honda.
“It has been an incredible weekend with a perfect first few laps, the pole position, the fastest lap, and the victory. I arrived here in MotoGP at 20 years old, taking my first pole position on my first race. After almost ten years I leave with a pole position and a victory, I think I couldn‘t have given Yamaha a better present than this for their support and their hard work during these years,” Lorenzo said.
“We always had a competitive and winning bike. Now we will enjoy and celebrate these memories. Tonight at the party I will enjoy the last moments with my team. During the race you spend 45 minutes completely focused on what you are doing to dominate this bike, so when you cross the line you aren‘t very emotional yet and you don‘t think too much, because you need to recover.”
“After two or three minutes I started remembering the best moments in my career and also the hard moments and in parc fermé it was very emotional with my team. For sure I will throw one of my biggest and craziest parties today because it‘s a good day. We have to enjoy all of these experiences and especially this last moment with Yamaha.”
Andrea Iannone put in a superb ride as he continues to recover from injury to secure third place ahead of Valentino Rossi in fourth and his new Yamaha teammate, Maverick Vinales in fifth.
Top ten from Valencia:
1 Jorge LORENZO - Movistar Yamaha MotoGP - 45'54.228
2 Marc MARQUEZ - Repsol Honda Team - 45'55.413 + 1.185
3 Andrea IANNONE - Ducati Team - 46'00.831 + 6.603
4 Valentino ROSSI - Movistar Yamaha MotoGP - 46'01.896 + 7.668
5 Maverick VIÑALES - Team SUZUKI ECSTAR - 46'04.838 + 10.610
6 Pol ESPARGARO - Monster Yamaha Tech 3 - 46'12.606 + 18.378
7 Andrea DOVIZIOSO - Ducati Team - 46'12.645 + 18.417
8 Aleix ESPARGARO - Team SUZUKI ECSTAR - 46'12.906 + 18.678
9 Bradley SMITH - Monster Yamaha Tech 3 - 46'20.221 + 25.993
10 Alvaro BAUTISTA - Aprilia Racing Team Gresini - 46'29.293 + 35.065
