Jerry Burgess: Jorge Lorenzo to be Valentino Rossi’s biggest ever rival

Valentino Rossi’s legendary crew chief Jerry Burgess believes Jorge Lorenzo is already well on the way to becoming the toughest rival the Italian has ever faced.

Rossi got the better of his young Fiat Yamaha team-mate in a thrilling Catalunya MotoGP race last weekend after one of the best races witnessed in MotoGP in recent memory.

And Aussie Burgess believes the emergence of Lorenzo as a major title threat in his second premier class campaign has already shown he has the capability to become Rossi’s greatest ever rival.

The 30-year-old Italian has had some famous rivalries in his illustrious career, particular with sworn enemy Max Biaggi and then Spaniard Sete Gibernau.

The emergence of a new younger generation then saw Aussie Casey Stoner pose the biggest threat to Rossi’s modern domination of MotoGP.

But Burgess told MCN: “You can’t put Sete and Max in the same criteria. You can put Casey and Ducati in a small window of time, but certainly when you’ve got a guy on the other side of the garage on the same bike and the same tyres as you have and you’ve got to race him, the then rivalry is bigger. The only different factor is the rider. So it’s a case of the best man wins.”

Asked whether Rossi had now struck a crucial psychological blow in the championship with his last gasp success over Lorenzo in Barcelona, Burgess added: “If I was Jorge I’d be pretty ecstatic. We’ve always known he was good and his feeling probably through the middle of last year was to get that over, and he couldn’t wait to get started on this year with a clean sheet. He knew he was out of the chance to win the world championship last year but he learned a lot about the bike and now we can see him as a serious threat.”

Reflecting on last weekend’s stunning success, which sees Rossi, Lorenzo and Stoner head to next weekend’s Assen GP tied on 106-points, Burgess said: “Without question we get an absolute cracker of a Grand Prix once every six years. This is reminiscent of some of the battles that Mick Doohan and Alex Criville had and our race in Laguna Seca with Casey was a great race in the recent past. Catalunya was as good as it gets.”