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Which one of us, at least once in their life, has found themselves in front of so-called "Sliding Doors"? Those doors which, as happens in the 1998 film of the same name with Gwyneth Paltrow, can change the course of our lives in the blink of an eye. Doors that Jorge Lorenzo has found himself in front of several times during his career, as he recounts in the third episode of the DAZN docu-series "Quatro Tiempos".
“In 2009 I was close to signing for both Honda and Ducati, closer to Ducati, because Stoner started to have health problems and didn't finish the races well - reveals the Majorcan - My previous manager Marcos and I met with Livio Suppo and made a list of the positive and negative aspects of staying at Yamaha or moving to Ducati, which was a higher offer from a financial point of view".
It was a door that closed with a stalemate, with the Spanish rider continuing his adventure with the Iwata manufacturer, adding three World Championships to the two won in the 250 class: "I did well because in the end that bike was quite difficult, to put it mildly, and the following year I started winning my first title with Yamaha and everything went well”, comments Lorenzo.
A move to Ducati which then materialized towards the end of 2016, when the Majorcan ended his stay in Yamaha to get on the Desmosedici GP, which he left after just two seasons to embrace the Honda dream team project with Marc Marquez.
"Obviously, if I had won the race at Mugello, it would have happened a week or two earlier and I probably would have won a few titles with the Ducati and I would still be racing" commented the five-time world champion, who with a cool head confessed that he is not convinced he had done the right choice by getting on the Honda train. It was the most difficult season of Jorge's career, which led him to make the decision to retire at the end of 2019: “The decision to switch to Honda? Perhaps if I had switched to the satellite Yamaha, things would have changed - admits Lorenzo - but obviously saying 'no' to Honda, which is every rider's dream, is very complicated".
Pedrosa: "My heart has always been in Honda"
Dani Pedrosa knows this very well, revealing to the microphones of DAZN that he in turn rejected an offer from Ducati in 2009, to continue racing with the golden wing manufacturer.
“My heart always wanted to race with Honda and at that point in my career I hadn't even considered it - explains Dani - In reality, the offer surprised me because I had no intention of changing and therefore, I had to think about it, but it wasn't in my plans".
Despite the difficulties experienced in his 13 years of MotoGP with Honda, the Catalan rider never thought of leaving the Japanese team.
“When I joined Honda MotoGP, they were going through a bad period, when Rossi was gone and they didn't win and they couldn't find their way. But it was clear to me, I've never been afraid, I've always been very happy and motivated to tackle the job - says the 37-year-old, convinced that Honda will be able to raise its head again, as it has already done in the past - In the years in which I was at Honda, especially in the early days when there was the war between Michelin and Bridgestone, they were not successful with any of their projects. Particularly in 2007 and 2008, we were the only ones with an engine with conventional timing while the others already had pneumatic valves and after the first year of Bridgestone, we didn't even have success with the bike. It was a very difficult three or four years in a row, but I always found a way to work with them and I understood them well."
A man who is a symbol of Honda, the rider from Sabadell has never questioned his choice to stay with the Tokyo manufacturer, despite never being able to put his stamp on MotoGP. But who knows what kind of path his career could have taken if he hadn't let the door that would have led him to Ducati close.
