Fifteen points after seven GPs is the overall entry for Valentino Rossi in the first third of the championship: his best result is 10th place at the Italian GP in Mugello. Please wake us up, we have to dream …
There are no two options: either Valentino is the victim of some crazy, stellar, absurd misfortune or there really is something wrong. In fact, between crashes and poor performances, Rossi is a shadow of his former self. Not that he was a locomotive in 2020, but after the same number of Grands Prix he still had a podium and a total of 58 points, which put him -26 in ninth place ahead of the then provisional championship leader Andrea Dovizioso.
Now it may be true that the purely Italian hero turned 42 years old, but if age was the problem it would mean the years had rained down on him like a sack of concrete. It’s just not possible …
Today Vale actually finished 19th overall and when he fell he was 13th at the beginning of the 16th lap behind Bastianini, Alex Marquez and in front of his brother Luca Marini, who is in the ‘Bronx’ classification.
“We’re looking for the reason for what happened – Rossi explained perplexed in the briefing after the race – I felt bad right from the scouting round. I was without a stop. The temperature in the race today was the same as in FP4. So much so that in the warm-up this morning I put on a hard tail to dispel my doubts and was still strong after 12 laps. Instead, things went bad straight away that afternoon. I lost six tenths per lap. In the first few laps they all overtook me because I was slowly coming out of the corners. When you’re behind someone, the front tire usually suffers from overheating, not the rear tire. Later I fell because, as always, there was a lot of vibrations in these cases. “
Our hero is disappointed, because after setting the eleventh fastest time in qualifying for a place in the fourth row, he had hoped for something better …
“It was a great shame for us – he went on – because I thought with my pace that I would have a good race. It was a missed opportunity. We will try again tomorrow during the test with a hard and a medium to understand the sensations. I didn’t have a bad start, on the contrary, I got away quite well, but in the second corner Pecco and Binder got up and the two Hondas overtook me. Then I started to drive very slowly and the stern slipped a lot ”.
As Vale said, Monday’s tests in Barcelona will help him understand, even if the nine-time world champion still doesn’t know if Yamaha can try something new for him. And then he added, “I don’t think testing will make any difference”.
The rest is just speculation. We’re trying to blame a technical problem, but Vale doesn’t seem to have had one. We change the subject and talk about the holeshot.
“I use it at the start and when accelerating out of corners and it works. When braking? No, we also saw from the data that there is no difference ”.
So it’s time to get back to where you started …
“I wasn’t bad in training yesterday, and I was always close in the warm-up as well. That’s important, but in the race I was very disappointed from the start. It’s a shame, we had a great opportunity to drive a nice Grand Prix. Normally the hard tire needs a little more time to get up to temperature, but after three laps it is usually OK ”.
So the secret remains. Just like the open leathers from Quartararo, which Valentino obviously doesn’t know about …
“It’s very strange …” was all he said. Indeed, among all the problems that have arisen over the years, this is absolutely rare. Who knows how much and whether it will cost Quartararo dearly after Suzuki made a report with Race Direction, even if we think that the “secret of the open leather” is not as mysterious as that of a tire that is warm -up went well and had no grip in the race …
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