Rating the Riders: Jorge Lorenzo

Jorge Lorenzo, Movistar Yamaha, 1st, 330 points – Score: 9.5

All year long, everyone – engineers, journalists, pundits, other riders (with the possible exception of Valentino Rossi, for obvious reasons) – said the same thing over and over again: “Jorge is faster, but Valentino is more consistent.”

The statistics bear that out: Jorge Lorenzo led for 274 of the 448 laps raced this year, a fraction over 61%. He also had five poles and six fastest race laps, second only to Marc Márquez. Jorge Lorenzo was just plain fast in 2015.

This should be no surprise. After a difficult 2014, Jorge Lorenzo took this season deadly seriously. Last year taught Lorenzo that the cost of not being fit at the start of the season was defeat, and he has no taste for that.

In contrast to 2014, Lorenzo turned up to the first Sepang test in outstanding shape, slimmer than he has ever been, and fitter than he has ever been.

Yamaha had monitored his progress very carefully, following his training program closely and even sending team boss Wilco Zeelenberg down to Andorra to go skiing with the Spaniard, and check on his condition. When the 2015 season started, Lorenzo was ready.

Unfortunately, his equipment was not. A helmet liner malfunction in the first race at Qatar meant he raced with his vision partially obscured, finishing fourth after leading for most of the race.

It was a sign of things to come, with bronchitis hampering him at Austin, then the wrong tire choice at Argentina seeing him finish well down the order. After the first three races, Lorenzo trailed his teammate Valentino Rossi by 29 points.

At the next round, Lorenzo’s luck appeared to change. The Spaniard embarked on a string of four imperious victories, starting at Jerez and finishing at Barcelona.

Going into Assen, he had cut the deficit to just a single point. From Assen, the tides turned again, both Rossi and Lorenzo tossed on the wild seas of fortune.

Luck, or perhaps more accurately, events, continued to dog Lorenzo: another helmet malfunction at Silverstone, this time because he had not put his breath deflector in and his visor was misting up in the rain.

A crash at Misano in the bizarre dry-wet-dry race, when he came out and pushed too early on slicks, seeing Scott Redding fly past him.

But as the season wound to a close, Lorenzo started to come into his own. Another masterful win at Aragon, two strong second places at Phillip Island and Sepang, including a pass on both factory Ducatis which was as close to picture perfect as imaginable, and Lorenzo was within seven points of Rossi, and his third title.

Rossi starting from the back of the grid made his task a lot easier, but Lorenzo got the job done, putting so much pressure on the chasing Hondas that he made it incredibly hard to pass. Jorge Lorenzo was a deserving champion in 2015.

This was far from a perfect season, however. Lorenzo got an awful lot of things right in 2015, but there were also some entirely unnecessary mistakes. His decision to stick with helmet manufacturer HJC, despite a number of problems in the past, seems ill-advised.

If the lining of his helmet had not cost him victory, or at least a very good shot at it, in Qatar, the 2015 season may have gone very differently. At Misano, Lorenzo spent too much time worrying about Valentino Rossi, rather than riding his own race.

And though Lorenzo was pretty much unbeatable on the standard Bridgestone tires with the edge treatment, at the high-speed tracks where low temperatures meant he could not get the non-treated tires to work, he suffered badly.

With new electronics and new tires in 2016, Lorenzo faces a lot of new challenges in defending his MotoGP title. So far, he has not yet managed to secure back-to-back championships. Three MotoGP titles puts him in a very select club, but winning two in a row would cement his place in the GP pantheon.