Jorge Lorenzo spoke to the podcast “The Wild Project” about his way of thinking at the time he was racing and, according to Lorenzo, it led him to become MotoGP world champion.
– I’m a big believer in the Japanese philosophy, in ‘Kaizen’, because if you think that you’re never going to be World Champion or that it’s not your goal, you never will be. The first step is to want to be World Champion, because there are people who weren’t born for it and hate competition, hate it, weren’t born for it, don’t seek it out and don’t want to compete and aren’t ambitious. Nobody tells them they have to improve, they do the minimum and that’s it. But the great champions are ambitious and huge, very competitive, otherwise they’re not good for sport or competition
He added of the ideal profile for a champion: ‘Hyper-competitiveness, capacity for sacrifice, endurance in the face of pain, curiosity, perfectionism and intelligence. If you put effort and talent/discipline together, it’s the best. If I had to choose, I’d go for discipline, but it’s best to have both