Michele Pirro has never seen a rider as “obsessed” with improvement at Ducati as Jorge Lorenzo was during his time with the team.
Pirro has been part of Ducati since 2013, when he first came on board as a MotoGP test rider.
Since then, he’s worked alongside plenty of big names, including Andrea Dovizioso, Lorenzo, and now Marc Marquez.
Lorenzo made the switch to Ducati in 2017 after leaving Yamaha, but things didn’t go as planned.
The club signed him to a two-year €50m (£43.5m) deal, but he had a hard time getting to grips with the Desmosedici early on. That led Ducati to bring in his replacement early in 2018.
Jorge Lorenzo’s intense Drive to improve Ducati’s Bike, according to Michele Pirro
Lorenzo didn’t click with the Desmosedici right away, finishing seventh in 2017 while Dovizioso came within 37 points of catching Marquez. Still, Pirro noticed how determined Lorenzo was to find a breakthrough.
Pirro told Moto.it: “Let’s say the obsessed one was Lorenzo, because he really had that drive. I mean, I followed him closely, and Dovi too, but Lorenzo was absolutely obsessed with improving the bike and all that sort of thing.
“The others basically came into a situation where the bike was already working. So, well, all the young riders arrived when the bike already had a solid foundation, let’s say, it was working. So, the other riders put in a lot of work, [but] Lorenzo was obsessed.”
By early 2018, Ducati added extra padding to Lorenzo’s fuel tank, which gave him better leverage through his legs. He went on to win back-to-back Grands Prix in Italy and Barcelona that year—taking pole and fastest lap at Catalunya as well.
The changes did improve his form on track, but not enough to change Ducati’s mind. They had already lined up Danilo Petrucci from Pramac for their factory team in 2019 by then. Lorenzo moved on to Honda for what turned out to be his final season in MotoGP.
