22-year old Jorge Lorenzo joined the Fiat Yamaha Team in 2008 as double 250cc World Champion, having won the title for the past two years with Aprilia. Following his outstanding debut year, Lorenzo came of age in 2009, winning four races and pushing his team-mate Valentino Rossi to the limit throughout a superb season. The 2010 season saw Lorenzo build on his 2009 successes, fighting at the front to dominate the season and take the World championship title.
The 2009 season witnessed Lorenzo take four wins, standing on the podium an additional nine times and only missing out once in all 17 rounds on a front-row qualification, a remarkable show of consistency. He was Rossi’s only championship challenger in the latter half of the season and once that chance was gone he focused on securing the number two spot, which he duly did in Valencia.
The 2010 season saw him take up where he left off in 2009, taking the fight to team-mate Rossi from the first race. It soon became clear that Lorenzo was the man to beat last season, the young Mallorcan went on to clock up an impressive nine race wins on his way to securing his first ever MotoGP World Championship title. In doing so he also broke the record for the number of points eared in a single season, accumulating 383 by the last race in Valencia.
Lorenzo was born on the Balearic island of Mallorca, Spain on 4th May 1987. He began riding motorbikes at home at the tender age of three and within months of taking to two wheels was competing in his first minicross races. In 1995, aged eight, he won the Balearic title and followed that up the following year by taking the Island’s minicross, trial, minimoto and junior motocross titles.
Lorenzo graduated to road racing and national competition in 1997 and it didn’t take him long to adjust, winning the Aprilia 50cc Cup in 1998. Despite officially being too young, a special dispensation in 2000 allowed him to compete in the Spanish 125cc series at the age of 13 and he made history the following year when competing in Europe and becoming the youngest ever winner of a European 125cc race.
The precocious teenager, once again showing that age was no limit to a quick rise up the ranks of motorbike racing, made his firstforay onto the world stage with Derbi at the Spanish Grand Prix in Jerez in 2002, the third round of the season. He did not reach the legal age of 15 until Saturday and therefore missed the first day of practice but was unfazed this and impressed the paddock by qualifying for the race, cementing his position in the World Championship over the course of the season as he got to grips with the circuits.
The young Mallorcan hit the big time the following season, winning his first 125cc Grand Prix in Rio de Janeiro and then going on to win three more races the following season, finishing fourth in 2004 and taking his podium tally to nine before making the step up the quarter-litre class and switching to Honda machinery. Six podium finishes and four pole positions in his rookie 250cc season sealed fifth in the championship and, with a move to the Aprilia factory team, 2006 was widely expected to be his defining year. Lorenzo indeed surpassed all expectations in 2006, dominating the class with eight wins and a record-equalling ten poles, clinching his first world title convincingly. 2007 saw more of the same and an incredible nine pole positions saw him win from every single one of them, claiming his second world title at the penultimate round in Sepang. He also became the most successful 250cc Spanish rider of all time in the process.
He joined Yamaha in 2008 and exploded onto the MotoGP scene with an outstanding pole position at the opening round in Qatar, before finishing second in the race. A second pole position and another podium in round two proved it was no fluke, before he went on to take an incredible third pole and a deserved maiden win at the third race in Estoril. He returned to earth with a bump in China, when a crash in practice saw him fracture both ankles, although he battled on to finishfourth in the race before coming back with another podium next time around in France. The middle part of the season was difficultfor the young Spaniard as several more crashes left him with further injuries and battered confidence, but he never gave up and made it back to claim two more podiums. He finished the season in fourth position as rookie of the year, the most successful debutante since the start of the four-stroke era.
The 2011 MotoGP Championship sees the reigning World Champion with a new racing partner, 2010 MotoGP Rookie of the Year Ben Spies. The Texan moves up from theTech3 Yamaha Team to join Yamaha’s Factory Racing outfit in the bid for glory. A colourful character, Lorenzo has a fondness for exuberant post-race celebrations, which make him a popular figure with the fans. His nickname ‘X Fuera’, is an allusion to his flamboyant outside overtaking style.
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