hey can u tell me about the dovizioso-lorenzo hate lore? i didnt know they had beef with each other
i need you to know something anon, whoever you are…i know im 100 years late on answering this ask but honestly it is an incredible testament to my strength of will that i am answering at all because this almost made me get a VOLUNTARY LOBOTOMY
so when you first asked, i thought i had a good enough handle on this question. i had seen most of their later time together as ducati teammates, as well as a solid amount of the ‘08 - ‘16 seasons (w a particular focus on j-lo). as a verified Jorge Lorenzo Shooter from the day i first learned who that man was, i thought i could at least give a decent overview of their rivalry. BUT as i was typing my initial response, i thought “you know…their 250cc days are supposed to actually be where their rivalry was the strongest. i should at least check out the best battles from those years before i answer this’
and bitch. 3 months and 2 full 250cc seasons later…here we are. i hope you’re happy.
for this answer, i’m just going to focus on their time together in the 250cc class. i would really like to get a post together about their ongoing premier class sniping + their ‘17 / ‘18 seasons as ducati teammates, because those are also WILD (the girls were fightingggggggg) and the inter-team politics that was going on at ducati those two years was…well. par for the course with ducati (im also on a mission to convert as many fellow ducati haters as i can…One Day You All Will See…) but that mess truly deserves a whole separate discussion. and i’d imagine everyone’s at least a little bit more familiar with the circumstances around those later years than they are two early-aughts 250cc seasons lol
so without further ado (she said after rambling for three paragraphs) – LET’S GET INTO THE BIRTH OF THE REAL GREATEST ITALIAN - SPANIARD RIVALRY OF ALL TIME:
SO. imagine that you are the son of a sicilian motorcycle racer. you of course decide to follow in your father’s footsteps and become a motorcycle racer as well – as you are legally obligated to do if you happen to be born in italy or spain i fuckin guess. and hey, great news – turns out you’re pretty good at it! at age 16 you enter the 125cc class of grand prix motorcycle racing and you do…well…not great! p16 overall. but that’s ok! it’s your first year! and hey, you like your team. you’re a honda rider, and you stick with them, steadily improving over the next couple years until in 2004 – you win the world title!!!!!! incredible!!!!! it’s a good fucking win, too. you never finish below 4th (outside one single dnf) and you end up 91 pts clear of your next closest challenger.
then NEXT YEAR you get bumped up to 250s – a difficult jump in general, but this season particularly so because the guys at the front of the field here are two little-known riders by the names of casey stoner and dani pedrosa. but hey, you actually manage to keep up with them kinda! you get a handful of podiums, get into some great dogfights, and finish the season in third! seems like a great set up for next year, since those two will be off to the land of 500s (where they will crash one million times each approx, bless <3). 2006 could be yours! it should be yours! let’s fucking goooo baby!!!
one problem. your title rival for the next two years? it’s this guy:
SO. JORGE LORENZO. where to even begin man…he is my favorite for a reason and that reason is that he is completely and utterly fucking ridiculous as a person. as a fan, this is something i absolutely adore about him. if i was racing against him for a world title in the year 2006, though?
all you really need to know is that clearly his ass was Doing The Most back then:
and not only was he being ridiculous and over the top…but. he was also on better machinery.
i know, i know, i knowwwww – personally, i kind of hate using that reasoning for why your guy lost, because it lacks any and all nuance / context. But like – he simply was. Dovi’s honda rs250rw was finicky, not very fast, and also prone to some truly miserably-timed mechanical issues:
(misano ‘07…if you’re going to watch one of their 250 races, i’d do this one because it just gives you a good sense of the overall ~vibe. incredible dovi performance, great battle with jorge, seems like maybe he’s going to do the impossible here, and then – it all falls apart)
it wasn’t the WORST bike on the grid (his teammate yuki takahashi finished 7th and 11th those seasons, for reference) but it wasn’t touching the aprilia jorge was on, performance-wise.
jorge is an incredible rider. like i personally would argue he’s basically untouchable on the days when he’s truly locked in and feeling good. but you watch him in these two seasons and it’s just so clear his bike is faster than pretty much everyone else’s. he fucks with the whole rest of the field sometimes just because he can. truly two crucial seasons to understand exactly why jorge lorenzo is the way he is i would argue, because the cockiness / audacity he sometimes showed once he got to the premier class actually makes perfect sense when you see what he was doing the two years immediately prior. a star was born, bitch! an icon, legend…she was the moment:
now again…imagine you’re the son of a sicilian motorcycle rider who was maybe kinda primed to be the Next Big Thing. but suddenly the honda you’re riding is Notably Worse than a fair amount of bikes on the grid, and you’re riding around its problems the best you can, and you’re putting in absolute barnstormer performances, banger after banger, sometimes outclassing guys who should reasonably be finishing like 5 seconds ahead of you, and –
you know what? it’s not enough.
and the truly tragic thing about being andrea dovizioso? it never really will be 🙁
so yeah. bad vibes! to say the very, very least! you get the sense that jorge just kind of left a bad taste in dovi’s mouth – like on a personality level they just do not gel At All. but then in addition you have to imagine dovi’s feelings towards jorge are all tied up in the bitterness he probably feels about the unequal machinery, the problems he himself was having with honda, the way he was cast into this role of the perpetual underdog who never gets his due entirely against his will – even though that wasn’t really his narrative before at all – and the fact that he is never, NEVER really able to shake that off after…
like i think his dislike of jorge has grounds, sure. one fundamental thing about jorge lorenzo? his ass is ANNOYING. i know this and i love him. but i think the way dovi is so precisely and steadfastly a Bonafide J-Lo Hater actually has less to do with jorge the person than it does the entire circumstance surrounding the genesis of this rivalry, you know? imagine what it would be like to know you’re a very talented rider. and you’re supposed to be proving that you’re The Next Big Thing. but instead you keep losing…to this fucking guy:
doviiiiiiiiiiii. you’re so much stronger than me.
