Lorenzo's condition 'worse' than he expected

Lorenzo fractured his left wrist in a big shunt in Thailand practice last month and has spent the four grands prix since on the sidelines, but entered the Valencia weekend confident of racing.

The three-time MotoGP champion was 19th in the combined classification on Friday, two seconds off the pace, and admitted after the day's running that it had been a challenge.

"Honestly a little bit worse than I expected yesterday," Lorenzo said.

"It's not the same to do normal life, but you don't feel so much pain, even if I don't have full mobility.

"But another thing is the pressure, the heaviness of the MotoGP bike, especially on braking. It's a lot, and still the injury is not healed completely.

"I'm much better than in Sepang, probably rain conditions help me, because in the rain you have more or less half of the pressure you get in the dry.

"But for the negative part it's more easy to crash, so with not completely healed injuries... the idea of crashing is not very welcome at the moment."

Lorenzo is set for his first test with Honda next week ahead of his move to the team next season, but stressed this had no bearing on his approach to the weekend.

"I'm worried about myself, about my physical condition. I know the injuries aren't healed completely," he said.

"If in normal conditions you go into the rain, [you are] much more careful than in the dry because you don't want to crash - when you don't feel completely strong and completely well, you are even a little bit more [careful].

"It doesn't depend if it's the last race with Ducati. This is an subconscious thing."

Lorenzo's team-mate Andrea Dovizioso ended the day in fourth place, but was not satisfied with his GP18 bike with the rain.

"Today the feeling was quite bad on the bike. And the same feeling I had this morning and in the afternoon, when the water [level] was different," he said.

"The feeling was very bad, strange, because we expected a better speed.

"I didn't have enough feeling on the rear, to release the brake and make the speed in the middle of the corners.

"This season we didn't ride the bike in the wet a lot. And in this season we changed the bike quite a bit, the balance of the bike.

"So we have to understand and study, because normally in the past in any tracks our level in the wet, from the beginning [of the weekend], was good.

"It didn't happen today but I'm not too worried, I think we have to analyse, study and make some changes."