Jorge Lorenzo has brushed aside claims by his own Repsol Honda team manager that he needs to take ‘risks’ in an effort to close the gap to the front of the MotoGP field, saying his debilitating series of crashes are proof he is ‘pushing too much’.
Lorenzo takes the next step towards 100 per cent recovery during this weekend’s San Marino MotoGP at Misano in what will be his second race since returning from a back injury that sidelined him for two months.
It’s been a sobering 2019 MotoGP season for the Spaniard, who curtailed a race-winning stint at Ducati for the opportunity to join Repsol Honda, a team that has largely dominated MotoGP under Marc Marquez’s lead.
Struggling to develop a rapport with the Honda RC213V, a machine HRC has freely accepted is developed to the characteristics of Marquez specialist riding style, Lorenzo’s lacklustre performances have been interspersed with numerous crashes, including the most recent high-speed smash at Assen.
Though Honda is publicly standing by its man – to the end of his contract in 2020 – team manager Alberto Puig says he wants to see more risk-taking and motivation from Lorenzo, stating ‘he has to be willing to take risks and accept that in this sport you can hurt yourself.’
Puig comments surprise Jorge Lorenzo
It’s a suggestion that doesn’t sit well with Lorenzo, not least because he feels he is already pushing on the bike to find his operating window and that the crashes – and subsequent injuries – are proof of that.
"He’s the boss and a person that I have a lot of respect for because I think he knows about bikes and this [MotoGP] world," Lorenzo is reported as saying by our sister publication, Crash.net.
"[How] anybody can tell that I didn't try and didn't take risks with this bike - because I have huge crashes, always because I wanted to try to get good results.
"Probably that was the problem. I pushed maybe too much before knowing exactly the bike and that's why I crashed and I got injured and this made everything much more difficult.â€
Will Lorenzo stay with Honda… will Honda let him go?
For a rider on a two-year deal, Lorenzo’s 2020 MotoGP plans have nonetheless been hot topic over the last couple of months, not least when it transpired he’d been in contact with both Ducati and Yamaha about a deal.
Whilst those doors have been firmly shut – albeit not before plenty of column inches were filled with speculation – it does demonstrate Lorenzo’s train of thought that the Honda dream is perhaps not a long-term one. Indeed, the fact he reportedly offered his services gratis is a fairly damning reflection of his frame of mind.
Looking at the bare facts Lorenzo has nowhere to go anyway. The only available seats for 2020 are at KTM and LCR Honda, though the former seems unlikely to want him, whilst the latter is Takaaki Nakagami’s pending an official confirmation.
Besides, even if Honda wouldn’t necessarily want an unmotivated (and expensive) rider in its midst, it’s unlikely to want him become a foe in a rival team either. Better the devil you know.
Lorenzo will almost certainly attempt to turn things around, but his words about finding a way on a tricky bike with a team unlikely to have been impressed by his attempts to leave using a battered body that may not want to accept getting hurt in the hunt for results frames his predicament.
It could be a long 18 months ahead of Jorge…
