Jorge Lorenzo believes that the Catalan Grand Prix will be the hardest race of the year, despite the Spaniard taking pole position by over 0.3s in qualifying.
The Spaniard, who took his third pole in a row on his Yamaha, thinks that the expected high race day temperatures will require higher levels of concentration than normal after a sweltering qualifying session.
"It will be the hardest race of the year," he said. "The weather is so hot and it will be important to concentrate and be in the perfect physical condition."
The championship leader said that he had been impressed with the performance of the softer of the two kinds of Bridgestone tires available for the race, after he completed a number of long runs on them in qualifying. But that has now presented him with a dilemma as to which compound to use in the grand prix.
"Before today we were pretty sure we knew what tires we would use in the race," he added. "But in that session we did a lot of good laps on the soft tire, so now it's much less clear."
Lorenzo's main title rivals Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizisio qualified on the second row.