Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo were rivals from the day they met. Both coincided in the training categories heading to the World Championship and fought fiercely since their times in 125cc, especially in the quarter-liter class, where the enmity settled definitively. “The duel is going to be eternal,” Sito Pons predicted then, once at odds with Joan Garriga. They both relived these days, uploaded to the ring, their confrontations on the court, in a first round that was merely dialectical, despite the fact that blows were announced. Although they were not physical, there were verbal ones and quite a few.
The first, as soon as it began, was released by Lorenzo, promoter of Duralavita, the digital channel for gatherings and interviews that hosted the evening between both legends. “Did you come to hate me?” the Mallorcan snapped at someone who was one of his greatest antagonists during the golden era of MotoGP. “Of course, don’t hesitate,” replied the Catalan. “We have known each other since we were 14, 15 years old, and since then there has been a very strong rivalry, which was in crescendo. “I cannot deny that there were times when my rival and my direct motivation was you, and, therefore, at times I came to hate you,” he added.
Pedrosa, three-time world champion with a crown in 125cc and two in 250cc, opened his mouth to Lorenzo’s most pointed questions, who did not have to get so wet on the canvas of the Gran Price in Barcelona, the setting chosen for the fight between the two. . The peak of the rivalry came with the Mallorcan’s brilliant debut in the premier category, in 2008, where even King Juan Carlos I wanted to intervene by forcing a handshake. “I didn’t want to give it to you, but I had to. I gave it to you, but I didn’t feel it,” Pedrosa confessed about that snapshot on the podium in Jerez.
“You came to MotoGP, you didn’t speak very well of me, and I’m not a fake person. “Since I didn’t like you or what you said about me, I wasn’t willing to give you a part of me,” detailed the man from Castellar del Vallés, current KTM tester and television commentator on DAZN, a role he shares with the native of Palm. Those were other times, when the fantastic four, they, Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi, engaged in much cruder duels outside the circuit. “No water to the rival,” as Alberto Puig, his representative at that time, told Pedrosa.
Regarding that climate of war, Lorenzo confessed his desire to have dealt more than one punch to his great rivals. “A lot of times, but I couldn’t, they would have kicked me out of the World Cup. If there were no rules, I would have done it,” acknowledged the five-time world champion, twice in 250cc and three times in MotoGP. This last trophy is the one that Pedrosa most longed for and envied, especially the one that narrowly escaped him in 2012. “I have suffered a lot emotionally and mentally, the pressure from the team, from all the people around you,” he lamented, with a certain contained emotion, Catalan. That year, in Misano, a series of absurdities unleashed in just three minutes made him lose a large part of his options in the fight with Lorenzo. The subsequent emergence of another talent of the magnitude of Marc Márquez, his teammate at Honda starting in 2013, ended up distancing him from that dream.
When the Spaniard left Yamaha for Ducati in 2017, Pedrosa tried to get on his motorcycle without success. The Japanese chose Maverick Viñales and left him with the desire to test that machine that beat him in his best years. The curious thing is that Lorenzo was able to get on the machine. little samurai After his retirement, in 2019, a Honda that ultimately made them both throw in the towel.
In this off-track race, Pedrosa wanted to better understand the psychological profile of what was his great nemesis on the asphalt. “The important thing is to be happy, even if that is a chimera. I have the opportunity to choose my destiny at all hours, and I am quite happy, although not those peaks when you win a race, a championship,” Lorenzo opened up, who granted him few victories in his mission. Yes, he recognized that he compensated for his natural shyness and insecurity with cockiness and arrogance. “For me, my fame is deserved,” he replied when the other reminded him that most people disliked him. The Catalan finished off that moment with a joke: “My background is good, and I think that reaches people.”
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