P108
CN
III TRACKSIDE
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
J
orge Lorenzo is the fastest
MotoGP rider in the world.
Jorge Lorenzo has finished
10th and 15th in the last two
rounds.
Both of the above contradic-
tory statements are true. So just
what is going on with the defend-
ing World Champion?
One answer is fairly obvious.
The margins in MotoGP are
small, and the difference be-
tween success and failure like-
wise. But surely not that much,
if you have 64 GP wins and five
World Championships in your
pocket and a factory Yamaha
between your legs.
Another also springs to mind:
that Lorenzo is a superb rider,
but somewhat one-dimensional.
He needs everything to be ab-
solutely perfect—track surface,
bike settings, etc.—before he
too can do everything absolutely
perfectly. As golden-age hero
Randy Mamola once described
it to me: "He only has one knife
in the box." Albeit a very sharp
one.
But this also is a bit too sim-
plistic. To seek a deeper answer,
we need to fall back on what
sets motorcycle racing apart
from other tarmac-based motor-
sports: The fact that it is the
most personal, due to factors
including but not exclusively the
mobile center of gravity en-
dowed by a rider moving around.
For there is another more
subtle movable element. The
THE ENIGMA OF JORGE LORENZO
What's up with Lorenzo?
