After two consecutive races crashing out while in a top position, Jorge Lorenzo has been getting a bit of a reputation: hot headed. impulsive. Accident prone. Fast, but not able to stay the course. So imagine the surprise at a race where it’s Jorge who keeps his head while his much more experienced chief rivals lose their grip instead.

It didn’t look promising at the start, when Lorenzo had a poor getaway from the grid and got swallowed up by the pack as Dani Pedrosa raced away in front with Valentino Rossi struggling to hold on to him in second. But Lorenzo went into some effective damage limitation, pulled a brave outside line to carve through the riders who thought they had him pegged, sneaked past Carl Edwards in third and emerged at the end of the first lap on Rossi’s coat tails somewhat against the odds.

At this point it still looked like it was Dani Pedrosa’s