Jorge Lorenzo looks like a different person: he is not the same impulsive and kind-of-grumpy guy of some years ago anymore, but a mature and more confident man. This is the impression from the meeting with the MotoGP World Champion, who joined his fans in the Yamaha Stand at the EICMA show.
Just days later his fantastic success at the Estoril, where he left everyone standing, including Valentino Rossi (“It was a great day, particularly because I am sure Valentino gave it all”), Lorenzo talks about a World Crown that he felt like his own only after receiving the support of numbers, in Malaysia; “In motor cycling crashes and injuries can happen at any time, and until he fell in Laguna Seca, Pedrosa was really fast too.” Now there is only one GP left, in Valencia, before it’s time for a well-deserved rest: “It is important to finish on a high note, but I am really looking forward to take a break and re-charge my batteries for 2011.”
In 2011 his main challenger, Valentino Rossi, is switching to Ducati: “It is too soon to talk about next season, but I would have loved to face Valentino on a Yamaha once again. On the same bike, you don’t have an excuse, the stronger takes all, the loser cannot appeal to a technical deficit.”
He would not think of leaving Yamaha at all (“It is an amazing team, that gave me plenty of support from the very first moment”), and is moving to the next season with maturity, as a man that used experience to work on his defects and enhance his quality, and with confidence in what he’s worth. But don’t ask him whether he feels like the strongest rival of the Valentino era: “He should answer this question, not me…”