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All in all, it could have been a good weekend for Valentino Rossi. Definitely much better than the last ones. It was, in a certain sense, because an 11th place allowed him to take home some points, Something he failed to do in the last GPs, but this result is not enough for him.
“Finding mixed conditions was a shame,” the Doctor said with regret. “When it was wet, I was fast, and my pace wasn’t bad when dry but, when there’s a ‘half and half’ track, I suffer a lot. In hindsight, it would have been better to use the medium tire instead of the soft rain, but we thought it would start raining later, and we had prepared that one.”
But Valentino tried to see the glass half full.
“The result is nothing special, but it was a better weekend in which the progress made in the Jerez tests was confirmed. I could have been in the top ten,” he said.
Even the accident with Espargarò and Morbidelli on the first lap didn’t help.
“Pol was ahead, and I overtook him, but then he was aggressive when entering the corner and leaned in on me, then Franco gave us the last push,” he said. “I had to go wide and lost a lot of positions, from seventh to thirteenth, but it’s hard to say how it would have gone without that episode. In the end, we were lucky all three of us didn’t end up falling.”
Now they’ll have about ten days off, useful for preparing for what will be one of the most important races of the year.
“Mugello is always special, and I hope I’ll do well, but each track has its own story,” he explained. “Unfortunately, there won’t be spectators. It’ll be like playing a Champions League final in an empty stadium. I remember the atmosphere during the Monday tests. Sunday was full of people and, the next day, all you saw was litter and empty cans, a post-nuclear mood. Sometimes you wonder what’s the point of racing without spectators, but it’s better than nothing, and I hope that we’ll soon be back to normal.”
