Fiat Yamaha Team rider Jorge Lorenzo finished the final test of 2008 in third position yesterday, signing off his successful rookie year in strong form before a well-deserved two-month break.

His team-mate Valentino Rossi was quickest, with Dani Pedrosa second.

It was another cold day in Jerez and Lorenzo did not make his first foray on track until 1.30 pm, completing 58 laps before ending his day at 5pm. The 21-year-old spent the entire time on a test bike, which carries some new prototype parts, familiarising himself with the different machine, working on establishing a base setting and continuing to improve his feeling with the new single-brand tyres. He showed his improvement with a best lap of 1'40.426, just over 0.3 seconds off the current lap record.

“Today we concentrated on the evolution bike, which has some prototype parts, with a new setting from Valentino. It seems we had a small advantage with this bike and I was able to improve my time, so I am happy about this. This ‘new' bike is also more stable under acceleration, with less wheelie and the throttle is a bit easier to handle so these are important improvements”, he said. “The final conclusion of these two days is very positive I think, although we know there is still a lot of margin to improve, both in the bike and in my riding style and of course we need to keep working to better understand the new tyres. Now we start a long holiday and I am looking forward to starting training immediately, because since Valencia I have really been too busy! It will be good to have two months off with my friends and family but I am also looking forward to February in Sepang, when hopefully I will get to try the new engine.”

"This has been a very good test for us, and today we improved our lap time by quite a lot compared with yesterday”, added Team Manager Daniele Romagnoli. “Jorge focused on the new bike today and he likes it and was able to make some good laps. The team worked on finding a new setting, which helped us to improve our lap time and, although there is a lot more to work on, it seems with the new bike we have more potential to improve than with the old one so this is very encouraging. We are very happy about Jorge's lap time because he is the first rider who is using new tyres, behind Valentino and Dani who have had a lot more experience with them. Of course we need more time to understand the tyres and how we can use them to their full potential, but we have time. Now finally we have a long winter break for the team, but Yamaha will continue to work hard to improve our bike before the next test in Sepang in February."

There is now a testing ban for the MotoGP paddock until the end of January, and the next time the riders will be in action will be at Sepang in Malaysia on 5th, 6th and 7th February 2009.

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