Jorge Lorenzo arrived early to the front row press conference for the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix. The 22-year-old Majorcan had settled into the middle position reserved for the pole winner when the journalists and photographers started to file in. A second glance revealed something wasn't quite right. Lorenzo wasn't in a seat, but a wheelchair; his right foot was fractured and his right arm was in a sling. With the right foot unable to support weight, he and the chair had been lifted onto the dais.
During qualifying a few hours earlier, Lorenzo had crashed in turn 10. Then he got up and crashed again towards the end of the session, a vicious highside that brought flashbacks of his rookie '08 season (skyshots in China and Laguna Seca, and other less damaging crashes that disrupted his debut year). He'd been solid during pre-season testing and much of '09, the only real blemish a race crash in the Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez.
But now the championship was approaching midseason, and Lorenzo was in the thick of the battle; he'd arrived at the previous race in Assen as part of a three-way first place tie after six rounds. As he rag-dolled through the air and was smacked to the ground, the immediate question was, "Has he thrown it all away?"
Lorenzo could be forgiven for not showing up at the press conference. It wouldn't be a priority for most riders, hours after being stretchered into an ambulance. But Lorenzo is unfailingly polite and willing-if not eager-to please. He speaks excellent English and answers questions directly, though the expression on his youthful face can tend toward the impassive. He is also an anomaly in the paddock, a rider who avoids clichés in favor of thoughtful introspection that sounds like it came from a self-help book. Some of it has. Among the texts that guide him is Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."
Lorenzo was born and lives in Palma, the capital of Majorca, the largest island of Spain in the Mediterranean. Tennis great Rafael Nadal, whose life story and demeanor aren't far off Lorenzo's, is also from Majorca. "Yeah, Rafa is 'la figura,' ['the figure of the perfect sportsman'], because he has a good image with the press and he has been working all his life to achieve a goal without any doubt," Lorenzo says. "Yes, in that way we seem like each other."
Yet for much of his career, Lorenzo lived in London. Being in the UK helped him learn English and allowed him to concentrate on racing. He also had a brief flirtation with acting. "In your life, if you have the possibility you have to do what your heart says to you to do," he said. "And at that point my heart pushed me to do theatre. I didn't like what I expected, so I stopped. If my heart say to do it, I don't know, cooking, I will cook." What his heart is currently telling him is to be the MotoGP World Champion.
This version of Lorenzo is a long way from earlier incarnations when he was a terror, abusing anyone within earshot when things didn't go well. That version isn't completely gone; Lorenzo didn't hide his feelings when everything wasn't going right in his garage at Laguna. But it's largely recessive through hard work, a change of management, and a change of attitude.
"Well...it's true that sometimes in the period of 125 I was very young and [inconsistent]...my mood was not so perfect and when things get wrong I throw away my helmet or something like that," he said during an interview in the Yamaha hospitality unit. "It's important to do what you want to do, but in this world that everybody is watching and you have to deal with a lot of persons, you have to control more your emotions and I learn from this period."