The promise kept to Dad Laurent: Lorenzo Fellon becomes champion after a long ordeal

Lorenzo Fellon crowned European Stock champion in FIM MotoJunior: the story of a comeback after years of hardship.

Among the MotoJunior champions crowned yesterday at Misano was a name that anyone who follows the World Championship will remember: Lorenzo Fellon. The French rider has started over here, competing this year in the European Stock class on an SF Racing Yamaha and ending the season with a title that means a great deal. He has endured some difficult years, with numerous physical setbacks and the loss of his father, Laurent, a former rider and a well-known manager and talent scout.... Then came this year, and the breakthrough he needed to truly get back on track.

Lorenzo Fellon made his Moto3 World Championship debut in 2021 with SIC58 Squadra Corse. His rookie season was far from easy, and problems began to emerge the following year. In 2022, still with the same team, he suffered his first serious dislocations. Then, at the end of the year, he was struck by a devastating family loss: his father, Laurent Fellon, 61, passed away on December 5, 2022, after a long battle with cancer. A prominent figure in international motorcycle racing and a former rider, he had later devoted himself to discovering talent, including Johann Zarco, whom he guided to two Moto2 titles. The number 5 Lorenzo has used since he was a child is no coincidence: it is a tribute to his friend and mentor.

This was already a difficult situation to deal with, and at the start of 2023 his shoulder problems worsened. After moving to CIP - Green Power, Fellon struggled from the test sessions onward, eventually having to pull out during the warm-up lap of the season's first Grand Prix when his shoulder came out of its socket on its own. The young Frenchman had to undergo an initial surgery to address the problem and missed almost half the season, returning only at Silverstone.

Having lost his place in the World Championship, he looked to relaunch his career with the SF Racing team in the JuniorGP Moto2 class in 2024, but his shoulder continued to trouble him. Despite his rehabilitation, the problems persisted, and Fellon was forced to stop again during the season. In October, he went under the knife once more, this time in Rome, for a far more invasive and complex procedure: to repair the unstable joint, surgeons Claudio Ascani and Daniele Passaretti took a bone graft from his pelvis and inserted it into his shoulder.

Was that the end of it? Unfortunately not: in 2025, after returning to the same championship with SF Racing, Lorenzo Fellon suffered a training injury midway through the season and had to undergo surgery once again on his badly damaged right shoulder, just months after the complex operation mentioned above. Another setback meant starting over from scratch once more—a crushing blow for a young rider who had already endured so much physically in recent years.

After discussing the difficulties he was having with the heavier KALEX while his shoulder was still being rebuilt, Fellon and SF Racing decided to move to the Stock class in the same championship. This is where Lorenzo Fellon began his comeback this year: he opened the season with a podium in the first round, but his victories at Magny-Cours and Valencia proved decisive in his 2026 campaign. He claimed another second place at Aragon, and at Misano all he had to do was manage the race; a fifth-place finish was enough to set off the celebrations.

It marks the end of a nightmare, the closing of a chapter, and the return of his self-belief. Speaking right after the race, the French rider was generous in his praise of his rival and admitted that he had chosen to focus solely on the championship, without taking risks to improve his race result. "Thank you to everyone who believed in me through these very difficult years. For me, this is a rebirth," he said. We can imagine his father Laurent smiling, knowing that Lorenzo had promised to keep racing and winning for him: yesterday's result is the first promise fulfilled.

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