Speaking to the podcast “The Wild Project”, Jorge Lorenzo spoke about the “toxic” fans he encountered during his MotoGP career and shared some details of stories that marked him out at the time.
– I wanted to look like these characters. They didn’t affect me on the track, but off it’s not easy. One episode was when we went to a disco and, if they didn’t like us, they’d say: ‘Lorenzo, you’re a pimp, you’re a pimp’ or something else. We stayed away from them, because they never said that to our faces, people don’t get close to us, they’re cowards.
He added of Valentino Rossi’s fans: ‘One of the strongest things I experienced was in Valencia in 2015, when I won my last world championship. I won the race, Marquez was second and I was world champion. Of the 100,000 people in Valencia, 60-70% were yellow, they were for Rossi. We arrived at the parc fermé, took off our helmets and most of the circuit was chanting for me and Márquez, the two best riders in the world, the Spanish love them. Then, at the celebration, I remember being in my motorhome with music and all my friends, the most beautiful moments of my life. We were near a wall with a fence that prevents outsiders from entering the paddock and there was a group of 20, 30 people insulting my mother, my best friend. They were saying: “You’ve stolen the World Championship from us”. The Spaniards were saying: “You stole the World Championship from us”. As if Rossi was the Spaniard and we were the foreigners. It’s like Real Madrid players going to the Santiago Bernabéu and being whistled at.