Why Jorge Lorenzo Left Yamaha For Ducati

Was it that surprising that Jorge Lorenzo left Yamaha after a very successful eight, going on nine years in the MotoGP Championship? When the rumors came out that he was being courted by Ducati, and that he already had what was termed as his best contract to date from Yamaha, had gone unsigned; it seemed not good for Yamaha.

It indeed was not good for Yamaha. Ducati was eager to hire one of the top riders in MotoGP and Lorenzo seemed less than happy with Yamaha, especially since his teammate and rival received a contract at the same time before the first round at Qatar and signed first.

But Lorenzo went with the motivation speech – his main reason for the switch.

“I think there are many reasons, but the biggest one is my motivation,” Lorenzo said. “The challenge to try to win with another bike and the challenge for me after so many years in the World championship, so many years in MotoGP, to give my maximum effort everyday as I always try to do because I think I am one of the most professional riders and my focus in my work is 100 percent. I felt that I needed this new challenge to get this motivation to work as hard as I have ‘til now.”

Yamaha was quite sad to see Lorenzo go, Yamaha’s Managing Director Lin Jarvis described it as: “It’s like going to a discotheque and you ask a girl to dance and she chooses the guy next to you.”

Jarvis felt that he made the best proposal possible that Yamaha could make. He saw Lorenzo leaving involved three major factors – money, a competitive bike and being top dog instead of sharing that status with another rider, a.k.a. Rossi.

“I think he probably got an extremely good proposal, probably better than ours,” Jarvis said. “I think that was an important factor. I think the Ducati is currently a very competitive bike, so it is less daunting to make a change. And in addition to that I think that probably to be the number one in the future team was something attractive.”

Yamaha is adamant on the 50/50 approach and having two top riders on their team, not an easy prospect, but it worked for quite a long time.

"In Yamaha, we have run Valentino and Jorge together for many years and so we have the experience," Jarvis said. "It's not easy trust me to run with two top dogs on the same team. We've always treated them fairly and equally and we will continue to do that 'til the end of the year."

That 50/50 approach didn’t work so well after the fallout from last year’s penultimate round at Sepang, where Rossi and rival Marc Marquez’s conflict came to a head and Rossi’s punishment put his championship hopes in jeopardy. Lorenzo went on to win in Valencia and Rossi was blatantly bitter. If you could have any job in the world, you did not want to have Jarvis’.

The fallout from Sepang carried on. And many see it as the reason Lorenzo’s new suitor in Pomodoro Red had a chance. “I think you should ask the question to Jorge not to me,” Jarvis said about whether that was the reason Lorenzo left. “In my opinion what happened in Sepang was something very unfortunate. It definitely influenced the end of the last championship and certainly influenced the mood inside the garage. So clearly prior to Sepang, we had Jorge and Vale back together for three, three and a half seasons at that stage and honestly the relationship had been going very well.

“Of course, they’d always remained competitors with each other, but the team coexisted and we interacted very well and very freely with each other. After Sepang that changed, this is an absolute fact. Would I have changed the way I managed, or Yamaha managed the situation? No. We believed we managed a very difficult situation that was the best we could do under those circumstances.”

So was that the reason? Lorenzo was rather veiled about it. He did go on to say that he was grateful for Yamaha for all of these years. He didn't think he could have amassed his three World titles with them without them, but without specifically saying it, you can feel some of that displeasure and read between the lines. Perhaps the thing that pushed him over the edge and had him seriously consider another offer when he always said his goal was to stay with Yamaha his entire career. Perhaps something that sparked this new “motivation.”

“First of all I feel very grateful for Yamaha for all these years,” Lorenzo said. “But obviously I think they did what they felt, I did what I felt. In all these moments from last year and this, what it comes, what you feel that you have to do. But I don’t think this is the main reason. I always felt very protected by Yamaha. The most important thing, and if I change is what I told you – the big challenge in my head, the challenge that give me the motivation to work in the morning as much as possible and more than ever. This is the main thing, To win with another bike and to have this challenge in my mind.

Will it work out? Is it a good decision? It’s anyone’s guess. Should he change his mind again he could always do what Rossi did. Jarvis said the door is open for his return. Then again it could work out very well.