Lorenzo and Honda: Is this a match destined to last?

That was the first thought in the minds of a lot of race fans who closely follow MotoGP when the rumors were confirmed this morning and Honda announced that Lorenzo has been signed to a two-year contract to race alongside Marc Márquez on the Repsol Honda MotoGP team. The riders who have succeeded on a Honda in recent years have been known for wrestling the bike around, jamming it into a corner and firing it out. Lorenzo is known for his smooth, inch-perfect, high-corner-speed style of racing.

As Lorenzo showed many times on a Yamaha, and last weekend on a Ducati for the first time in his 24 races on the Desmosedici, when he has confidence and can ride as he wants, he can stamp out a race-distance series of virtually identical laps at a pace no one else can match. But when he doesn’t have that confidence… well, it took him 24 tries to get that first Ducati win.

I wanted to get a more expert perspective, however, so I asked four-time Superbike champ and occasional beIN Sports MotoGP commentator Josh Hayes what he thought about the news. Will Lorenzo get along with the orange bike?

“It’s an interesting move to me,” said Hayes. “I’m pretty close with (LCR Honda rider) Cal (Crutchlow) and I know Cal talked about how much he wanted that Honda, but when he got it he talked about how much harder it was to ride than he expected. I don’t think it’s going to be a walk in the park, where I think if he (Lorenzo) went back to Yamaha he’d expect to see results immediately. A little bit of testing and he’d be back at the front by race one. I don’t know that that’s going to happen so much with the Honda, but it will be really fun to watch.”

After a year and a half of working to adapt his riding style to the Ducati, Lorenzo will face a new set of challenges adapting to the Honda, Hayes predicted.

“I’m trying to think of anybody who’s ridden the Honda that way in the last however many, 15 years,” Hayes said. “I can’t think of anyone. Casey Stoner, Marc Márquez, right there you’ve got the two most freaks-of-nature, natural-talent, out-of-line riding styles as you can find. Dani (Pedrosa), who’s been talked about as one of the best in the world at getting that thing pivoted and then picked up. And then you’ve got Jorge, who really likes being on the side of the tire a lot.

“He’s going to have to find the right medium between his riding style and let’s say Marc’s or Dani’s to get the bike around the race track.”

Prior to this past weekend, speculation centered on Lorenzo going to a new Yamaha satellite team. Hayes also wondered about another route he could have taken.

“It seems like he would have been a better fit for a Suzuki, honestly, in my mind,” Hayes said. “I think the transition would have been more seamless, just watching that Suzuki go around the race track. It just looks to me to be a bike that would have suited him well.”

After winning this weekend at Mugello, Lorenzo said success came too late to salvage his strained relationship with Ducati. He said the Ducati team was too slow to make changes to the fuel tank area of the motorcycle that he requested to allow him to get the body position he wanted and be able to win, not just lead the first half-a-dozen laps and then fade back. Will Lorenzo’s Ducati experience help or hinder as he starts over anew with another team?

“He’s got a very fresh idea in his mind of having to learn some new things and he’s going to have to go through that process all over again,” Hayes said. “For sure, I don't think success will be immediate. But at the same time, the lessons learned from making those changes, he might do better the second time around.”

Not just a new bike, but also a new teammate

Another interesting question will be how Lorenzo adapts to life in the Repsol Honda team. One of the reasons he left the Yamaha factory team is because he felt his teammate, Valentino Rossi, got preferential treatment. Surely, he’ll be in that position again on the Honda team.

“Even if Jorge goes over there and has a pretty good level of success, Marc has a rich history with the company, and he’s not just going to displace that,” Hayes said. “You hear Jorge talk about how he deserves respect as a so-many-times world champion. I think he’s going to step in where that’s not going to carry that much weight. He didn’t win those championships with that company. Marc has.”

While the Lorenzo-Honda marriage overshadowed other moves more of the factory seats for 2019 were nailed down. Andrea Dovizioso extended his contract with Ducati and Danilo Petrucci was chosen to replace Lorenzo alongside Dovi. Among the big remaining questions are who will be at Suzuki along with Alex Rins and where Pedrosa will go.

Whatever happens, it seems unlikely that 2019 will be a boring season of racing devoid of surprises.