Speaking to Italia1, Valentino Rossi gave his views on an unusual French MotoGP at Le Mans that saw Rossi finish in last place.

“We started the race without having done a single lap in the wet,” Rossi told Italia1. “By the fourth lap I was having some difficulties already, especially in the right turns the bike was sliding a lot, so I decided to pit.

“In my opinion it was not a wrong decision, but the problem was that I made a mistake and crashed. Certainly it would have been better to pit two laps later, because at the point where I crashed and in two other points there was still a bit too much water. I got there slowly, but obviously not enough.”

He admitted that he had been trying to gamble to beat his rivals on strategy. because it was clear that other riders were faster in the race.

“Absolutely. I was struggling a bit in the wet,” said Rossi. “I started well and was second already, but I wasn’t feeling good, Lorenzo was opening the gap, and [Andrea] Dovizioso and [Marco] Melandri behind me were edging closer, so I thought it was better to pit immediately and be ready with the slicks.

“It wasn’t a wrong idea, because in the same conditions at Motegi [in 2007 Loris] Capirossi managed to win after pitting so early. The problem was that I made a mistake: I lost the front and there was nothing I could do about it.

“I tried to carry on in the hope of getting a lonely point in such a hard-fought championship, and also to get the anger out. But no one retired ahead of us, so this is the first zero for us this season. It’s a shame, so we start over at Mugello.”

Rossi said the whole Le Mans weekend had been one to forget.

“It went more or less bad all weekend because we’ve had many problems, and we’ve never been as competitive as we wanted to,” he said.

“We’ve made some mistakes in the bike’s set-up, the weather never gave us a hand, so I was never as strong as we had expected. We must understand why of course.”

Video of Valentino Rossi’s crash at Le Mans:

Popularity: 1% [?]

Subscribe to the post comments feeds or Leave a trackback