Is Jorge Lorenzo giving idea of a MotoGP return more consideration?

While Jorge Lorenzo has previously been at pains to insist his recent retirement from MotoGP racing is all-but-permanent, he now admits he would ‘listen’ to potential offers to get back on the grid.

The Spaniard quit the sport on the eve of the 2019 MotoGP season finale – midway through his Repsol Honda contract - following a season riddled with injury and a difficulty in adapting to the Honda RC213V.

At the time he said he was quitting because he wanted to put his health first following a number of bruising incidents, but has since gone on to show he may not quite be done with MotoGP after all.

Just weeks after leaving Honda, Lorenzo signed a deal to re-join Yamaha – the team with which he secured his three MotoGP World Championships – as a test rider and was even supposed to get a race outing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya before the coronavirus pandemic put a stop to that.

Nonetheless, after showing up his rivals by winning the latest Virtual GP on his debut, Lorenzo told MotoGP.com that he wouldn’t necessarily turn down a good offer to get back onto the grid, even if he admits he’d only do so with a team that could challenge for the title.

"It is true that no one has picked up the phone and called me to do this. I do not know what could happen if something like this happened. If this did not happen I would be happy anyway, but if it happens of course I will listen to you. 

“If this possibility happens my mind, of course I would take it to try to win. That if I see this very clear possibility that I can win the championship . At the moment I am very well and I do not think that this is going to happen, it is well like this.”

Could Jorge Lorenzo return to MotoGP?

‘Never say never’ seems to be the most appropriate way to describe Lorenzo’s future.

While he has previously insisted he is almost certain to remain away from the rigmarole of racing – perhaps to appease Honda for quitting midway through his contract – he has spoken more actively about getting back in the thick of it recently.

Indeed, he expected he would be quick during his wildcard outing in Spain and hinted that it wouldn’t be his only outing on the Yamaha M1 in 2020.

One could see this as perhaps a way of redeeming himself after a disastrous 2019 and remind some top teams of what they could be missing out on, not least because there are many who aren’t terribly convinced by his reasons for retirement in the first place. 

However, with no wildcards forthcoming in 2020 now, it means Lorenzo could spend more than a year out of racing before he gets another shot, which brings its own problems.

As Lorenzo has shown in the past, what he says and what he does can be entirely different to one another… in short, few would be ultimately surprised if Lorenzo does give MotoGP another crack at some point in the future.