Jorge Lorenzo is travelling to Japan on Monday in a bid to improve his feeling on Honda’s MotoGP bike after another disappointing result at Mugello.
Three-time premier class champion Lorenzo’s troubled 2019 campaign continued in the Italian Grand Prix, which was the scene of his first victory as a Ducati rider 12 months ago.
But this time around, Lorenzo could only manage 13th, and it was two places lower than the result he achieved in the previous race at Le Mans.
After claiming he had made some progress at Le Mans, Lorenzo finished five seconds further away from the winner than he did in France.
Lorenzo revealed that he will be making the trip to Honda’s Asakadai factory to work on finding a more comfortable position on the RC213V.
“I really believe we can make quite a big improvement in that area,” he said.
“The solution for us was going to Japan, to spend some days there.
“I knew before the race it would be difficult because of how I feel on the bike and because of the heat and the position I started [17th].
“More or less, I kept the pace I expected to and arrived in the position I expected. [It was] not better, not worse. But we cannot be happy.
“The position and distance to the winner was [worse] than Le Mans, but we expected that before the race.
“Hopefully step-by-step we can get closer and improve the result from Le Mans. This is my goal and this is why I won’t go home, but I’ll go to the factory and work hard.”
Six races into his tenure as a Honda rider, Lorenzo lies 14th in the championship on 19 points.
His total is almost 100 points fewer than team-mate Marc Marquez’s haul.
Lorenzo said after qualifying that Marquez’s strong form makes it hard for him to demand substantial changes to the bike.
But following the Italian GP, Lorenzo but said he believes Honda has the capacity to make a bike that is more “complete”.
“It’s clear we have a very strong engine at this moment, but this brings another problem in other areas, [it makes the bike] difficult to ride in my opinion,” Lorenzo said.
“Marc has been very fast, winning a lot of races with this bike, so the most logical thing is that they keep [following] the way of Marc.
“But also I believe if any factory can make a Plan B, it’s Honda.”
He added: “Let’s see if we can work together, not only on the ergonomy but also with other things to make the bike even more complete than now.
“For now, the bike is complete enough for Marc to improve the results of previous years, but for the other riders it’s more difficult.”