Jorge Lorenzo may have lost the race and 2012 MotoGP World Championship lead to Casey Stoner on Sunda🃏y at Estoril, but the Yamaha star felt he'd done better than expected.

Starting fourth on the grid, Lorenzo exited the first turn second to Stoner - but had fried his clutch, helping Stoner build an early adv💦antage before the slipping stopped.

Lorenzo then closed to within a few tenths of the Honda rider, but cou✱ldn't make a pass. Stoner pulled away in the closing laps to win by 1.4sec.

"I'm happy with this second position because I was expecting to ꩵfight for third or fourth and not𓆉 the victory," said Lorenzo. "The bike improved a lot from the practices so it was possible.

"I had two problems, at the start I used a lo𝔍t of clutch and burnt it so for two or three laps it was burning and I lost a lot of distance from Casey. Also at the end Casey was very strong.

"[Apart from] this everything was working well and I made a fastest lap, which is not veryღ common for me.

"We are just one point behind Casey, hopefully we can improve something on the bike tomorrow and be in fro🍸nt again," he added, referring to Monday's test at the Estoril c🎉ircuit.

"Jorge did a really great job and pushed really hard. He never gave Casey room to breathe and he couldn't do more than that. This is the right attitude to get the title," said team directo💞r Massimo Meregalli.

Round four of the chꦡa☂mpionship will be held at Le Mans from May 18-20