We catch up Lorenzo to find out how he’s really feeling about his switch to Honda
A special place in the MotoGP record books awaits Jorge Lorenzo. He knows it and he wants it. It’s why he chased and secured arguably the most difficult job in world motorsport – beating Marc Marquez on the same Honda machinery in the MotoGP World Championship.
Both will ride factory-prepared Honda RC213Vs in a fascinating, no-excuses showdown that opens with Round 1 of a 19-round series at the Qatar Grand Prix on 10 March. Between them Lorenzo and Marquez have won eight of the nine MotoGP world championships contested since 2010. Lorenzo with three titles and fellow Spaniard Marquez with five.
Only Aussie ace Casey Stoner, who has not raced for six seasons since retirement at the end of 2012, had the talent and hardware to interrupt their flow in 2011. And even before the new season starts, the 2019 title chase is being billed as two-man race.
Rival riders and teams have been written-off as title contenders, not least Andrea Dovizioso and Ducati and Yamaha’s star pairing of Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales.
Is casting aside Dovi, the title runner up of the last two seasons, or the evergreen and arguable GOAT Rossi a reckless forecast? Not according to the three-time MotoGP world champ.
“I have said in the past that the only two riders who can make a difference are Marc and myself and I still believe this,” Lorenzo stated. “If we are both in good shape and like the bikes we are riding then we are the only riders who can win races with some seconds of advantage.
“Dovi can win races, Maverick and Valentino can win races, but the riders with a difference in speed to win races with an advantage are Marc and me.
“And we will both have very strong bikes and a very strong team.”
Lorenzo embarks on his ambitious tilt at history with two clear goals and he will need every ounce of his famed bravado to hit his targets.
The first is dismantling Marquez’s status as the boss of fortress Honda and unravelling the theory that it is only the dynamic – and insanely brave – Marquez who can win races and championships on the RC213V.
The second is that Lorenzo’s first race win on a Honda will make him the first rider to win on three different brands in the modern era of four-stroke MotoGP which started in 2002.
Lorenzo has won 44 races with Yamaha and three with Ducati for his total of 47. Given the signals from his initial test-session pace on the RC213V, it will be a surprise if adding to that tally stretches much beyond the Spanish GP in May, the fourth race of the season.
Rossi has wins with Honda (33) and Yamaha (56) but failed to find the top step on the Ducati during his two seasons on the Bologna-built prototype over 2011 and 2012. Stoner won on his only two choices; Ducati (23) and Honda (15), and Vinales has scored wins with Suzuki (1) and Yamaha (4). Dovizioso scored a single victory at Honda but has since added 11 victories at Ducati.
Marquez has only ever raced for Honda and has accumulated a staggering 44 wins in just six seasons. Wisely, Marquez has seen no urgency to leave that safe haven.
“It is a new challenge for me and I will be trying to win and if it turns out that I win races with a third bike it will be a great record,” Lorenzo said. “Nobody in the modern era of MotoGP with four strokes has won races with three different manufacturers.”
As for ending Marquez’s five-title dominance with Honda – the last three in succession – Lorenzo says he may have to wait until 2020, the second year of his two-year stint alongside Marquez in the Repsol Honda garage.
Lorenzo is a perfectionist. He frets over being at one with his bike and in the comfort zone to deliver the metronomic front-running pace that is his trademark.
“To win the championship in the first year I will need to feel great on the bike from the beginning and this is difficult to happen in the modern era of MotoGP, especially changing bikes and with the control tyres and electronics,” Lorenzo said. “The way you have to ride each bike you need to completely change your style to be competitive. All of this is difficult to do.”
While Lorenzo was troubled by his 2017 switch to Ducati after nine years on a silky smooth Yamaha YZR-M1, it was that two-year experience on the brutal Desmosedici that will aid the Spanish talent’s move to Honda for the 2019 season.
“The characteristics of the bike (Honda) look more easy for my riding [style]. And things like the fact that I needed to use a lot of rear brake with the Ducati, this style of braking will help me in the future. On the Yamaha I almost never used the rear brake.”
Despite brimming with self confidence, he’s also acutely aware of the mountain that lies ahead of him, amplified by his recently broken scaphoid which will sideline the five-time world champ for the first test of the new year at Sepang.
“But to come out and beat Marc who is so talented and ambitious after six years with the same bike will not be easy,” he concedes, but with his steely determination adds, “but I assure you in my second year I will be more competitive than the first year.”
Despite the injury, Lorenzo feels he has never been more ready for his bid to beat Marquez, a fast, fearless and uncompromising racer who for the past six years easily bludgeoned his teammate Dani Pedrosa into submission.
It will not be so easy against Lorenzo who is the rider who went to Yamaha and engaged superstar Valentino Rossi in a head-on feud, and won the 2010 championship. That war between Rossi and Lorenzo at Yamaha has steeled Lorenzo into understanding that mental resilience will be crucial in his campaign to beat Marquez at Honda.
Lorenzo endured periods of self-doubt in his two years at Ducati while adapting to the bike and defeats at the hands of Andrea Dovizioso. It took Lorenzo 18 races to win on a Ducati but that unforgettable and crushing victory over Dovizioso at the Italian’s home race at Mugello last year was quickly followed by two more wins in Barcelona and Austria.
“When you are the fastest rider in your team you feel more quiet and more strong than your teammate,” Lorenzo said. “When your teammate is at same level or beats you, sometimes then you start doubting a little bit your own capacity.
“It is human nature that when you feel stronger than your teammate you can push more. This has happened to me in past and it happens to all riders.”
Lorenzo clearly hopes that he can induce Marquez to doubt his bullet proof reputation on a Honda.
So for Lorenzo when he was at Yamaha with Rossi and alongside Dovi at Ducati is it better to have your main rival inside the same team, on the same bike and then try and beat him?
“Theoretically, yes,” he grinned.
Words Colin Young Photography Gold & Goose
As appeared in AMCN Mag Vol 68 No 16