Yes, I ended up being a big Lorenzo fan, and he must be one of the few riders ever to have displeased his team by winning the riders’ championship, perhaps together with Nicky Hayden in 2006.
Imonhe thanked MM for not taking him out at Valencia with an over ambitious pass attempt, which MM doubtless would have tried had the title been between him and Jorge.
Again my reading of PI 2015 was that MM by his standards didn’t race the contenders hard early in the race at which time his bike had been skittish all season, but took the win when the bike came to him later in the race and a win became available, in the process discovering a different way to win. Sepang post the press conference was if you want to see me race a contender hard I will show you how I might do that cf Rossi vs Lorenzo Motegi 2010. That MM had the pace to go with Pedrosa and Lorenzo ahead of him at that stage in the race is forever unknowable, and pretty much based on supposition because of a single banzai lap to get pole, and MM usually has such a lap in him as he had shown on the last lap at PI. . He hadn’t been as fast as Lorenzo for the rest of practice and qualifying, and anyone who had been following the sport realised that it eventually was one of Pedrosa’s occasional untouchable weekends. Rossi could have added verisimilitude to his narrative by being as fast as the 2 riders ahead once MM was out, which he didn’t do. It is also always permissible to race another rider for position hence MM not being subject to any sanctions..
I really don’t know what the press conference declamation was about, but if it was intended to intimidate MM it certainly backfired. Someone who said she was a psychologist opined (and was howled down for saying same) that Rossi looked to her to be over the edge, perhaps having obsessed about PI with little sleep in the intervening period, which sounded plausible to me at least.