Starting a new stage in your life, Jorge Lorenzo you go through ‘La Caja’ DAZN to review everything that has been his career in MotoGP. The Mallorcan, now a World Cup commentator on the platform, nothing was left in the inkwell: from his relationship with Rossi, his departure from Yamaha and even certain aspects of his life that he had kept secret until now. A whole life dedicated to motorcycles that led him to get up to five world championships. A successful career that, however, in 2019 led to depression. Always demanding of himself and seeking maximum perfection, Lorenzo found a Honda that he did not know how to tame and that, together with injuries, led him to opt for his retirement that same year.
The Balearic no longer enjoyed his great passion and decided that it was time to start dedicating his time to leisure. “He was very perfectionist and one day Wayne Rainey, when we were talking on the phone, he told me: ‘Hey, don’t ever forget to enjoy yourself, because it happened to me that I was so obsessed with perfection and so much work, that in the end I didn’t enjoy it’. It turned against me because you always lose happiness and when you lose happiness and joy, you lose performance. And that, I suffered a lot in 2019, things were not going well for me, I was injured in preseason… And in order to reverse the situation with Honda, I only trained and trained from 9 in the morning and did not do any leisure. So, I went into a kind of depression. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t motivated,” Lorenzo tells about what would be his last season in MotoGP.
With that, he put an end to his stage as a World Cup pilot. He did it with five crowns, three in the highest category, which, seeing the rivals with whom he shared the track, are many. However, Jorge admits that his numbers could have been better: “He was a hard worker and when he came to the paddock, he worked a lot, but I had a problem and it was that I was going to bed very late. I think that if I had been more disciplined, if I had gone to bed two hours earlier and rested more, I would have obtained better results. With a few more hours of sleep, he would have arrived with more energy and stronger to fight for the victory instead of finishing second or third. That was my only weak point. In the end, there were many distractions that made me go to bed very late and I slept little on weekends.”
Goodbye Yamaha
Even so, his talent and constant work It served to stand up to Valentino Rossi. Lorenzo won his three MotoGP World Championships at the hands of Yamaha, a brand from which he said goodbye last 2016, after one of the most bittersweet stages in the competition and which, now, he explains openly: “It didn’t sit well with me that, by winning the championship (in 2015), those who really ruled Yamaha were not very effusive. In a way, it was normal with my claim to the TAS, which messed up the team spirit a bit. But in the end, a bit we both looked out for our interest and I looked out for mine. So I tried to play my cards and that didn’t sit well with Yamaha. In a way, I think Yamaha was more interested in Valentino winning (Rossie), for the media issue more than anything”.
And he set course for Ducati: “I believed a lot in Gigi Dall’Igna and I knew that, sooner or later, he was going to make a very competitive bike”. Of course, his bad relationship with Rossi was another incentive for his departure from Yamaha: “The worst moment was after Sepang, after Marc’s kick or fall, I don’t know how it was, but there was that touch. When I got to the playpen, I didn’t know anything and the mechanics told me: ‘Don’t mess it up’. When I saw that and found out that there was going to be no sanction, wrongly or not, I was turned on and disapproved of the images. From there, the relationship took a turn for the worse. But time heals everything: “It didn’t start to improve until 2018, little by little. And now it’s quite good.”
And remember one of his most mediatic battles with Il Dottorethat of the Catalan Grand Prix in 2009, when the Italian won the battle at the last corner’: “Rossi humiliated me. I sinned a little bit of linnet. He took advantage of my inexperience to overtake me in that curve, taking risks, knowing that if he closed me we would both fall. It was recorded as one of the most exciting races. Maybe he made me lose that championship, because if I had won that race I would have had more options to fight to the end with him.”