Jorge Lorenzo in statements for the podcast “The Wild Project” talked about the “toxic” fans he encountered during his MotoGP career and shared some details of stories that marked him at the time.
– I wanted to look like these characters. They didn’t affect me on the track, but off the track it’s not easy. One episode was when we went to a nightclub and, if they didn’t like us, they would say: ‘Lorenzo, you’re a pimp, you’re a pimp’ or something else. We would distance ourselves from them, because they never said it to our faces, people don’t approach us, they are cowardly.
He also added about 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 became world champion. Out 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 cheering for me and Marquez, the two best riders in the world, the Spaniards like them. Then, in the celebration, I remember being in my motorhome with music and all my friends, the most beautiful moments of my life. We were close to a wall with a fence that prevents people from outside from entering the paddock and there was a group of 20, 30 people insulting my mother, my best friend. They were saying: “You stole the World Championship from us.” The Spaniards were saying: “You stole the World Championship from us.” As if Rossi were the Spaniard and we were the foreigners. It’s like if the Real Madrid players went to the Santiago Bernabéu and were booed.’
