Rossi: Exactly how I wanted

Posted by Dono

Monday, 5th May 2008

Valentino Rossi ended a seven-race losing streak with his first Bridgestone victory, at Shanghai on Sunday - and sent a worrying message to his title rivals by riding 'exactly how I wanted from start to finish'.

In the previous three rounds, Rossi has been forced to ride conservatively to protect his tyres in the closing stages of each race, but the ever-improving Bridgestone-Yamaha partnership showed no signs of weakness in China - forcing Rossi's only challenger, Dani Pedrosa, to finally wave the white flag with three laps to go.

Starting from second on the damp grid, behind Colin Edwards, Rossi was fourth at the end of lap one, before passing world champion Casey Stoner and fellow M1 rider Edwards by the end of the third lap.

Rossi's remaining target was Pedrosa and he made his move on the Spaniard at the end of the 1.2km back straight to take the lead on lap 5 of 22. The Italian remained in front to the chequered flag, but it was nail-bitingly close for the majority of the remaining laps, with less than half a second between the pair.

But Pedrosa finally cracked on lap 19, leaving Rossi to take his first victory since last September's Portuguese Grand Prix by 3.890secs over the Michelin-shod Honda rider, with Stoner's Ducati over 15secs back in third.

"After seven races it is a great feeling to win again; I am very happy!" said a clearly relieved Rossi, who kissed his M1 on the slow down lap. "This is a very important result for us because above all I was able to ride exactly how I wanted from start to finish and this was great fun for me.

"I had a great battle with Pedrosa and he pushed me hard and to be doing 1min 59s until the end was unbelievable!" recalled the five time MotoGP world champion, who last took the title in 2005. "All weekend we were hoping the rain wouldn't come so when we saw it this morning we were quite disappointed, then it started to dry out so we were praying that it would dry completely; we were lucky today!

"We worked very well with Bridgestone and together with their technicians we made a late tyre change and it was the right choice because my tyre worked very well until the end, as my times showed! It's the first win for us with Bridgestone so this is a great moment also for this reason and I want to say thank you to them.

"We were fast from Friday morning here and step by step we've found the perfect set-up and today the hard work paid off for everyone. We've had four races and four different winners so this shows how close the championship is, now we need to keep going because our rivals are all very near.

"Lorenzo did a great race today with his injuries, so this is a good day for everyone in the team. Thank you to my team and everyone at Yamaha, it's great to be here again," he concluded.

In the championship standings, Rossi is now just two points behind rookie team-mate Jorge Lorenzo - who rode injured to fourth in Sunday's race - with Pedrosa a further seven points ahead. Fellow 2008 race winner Stoner remains fourth, but is now 25 points from the top.

"We needed this!" admitted team manager Davide Brivio. "It's a fantastic feeling for everyone to win again and Valentino did a perfect job today. There are many good things about this particular win; it's the first with Bridgestone, the first for a long time and also it's put us right back in touch for the championship after a poor start in Qatar. It's important that we continue like this but everyone has a great motivation and confidence is running high in our garage."

"We've waited a long time to get back to winning ways!" added team manager Masahiko Nakajima. "All of the Yamaha staff are very happy to win again with Valentino and I want to share this moment with Valentino's fans around the world! It's been a tough weekend and it was a big battle with Pedrosa, but it was an exciting and impressive race. I really want to congratulate Valentino and now we want to continue to improve the bike for the championship fight. We've done a great job with Bridgestone this weekend and we really appreciate their work, they helped us to win today!"

From : www.crash.net

• at 10:33 PM