What's gonna happen
when the red lights go out
at 2:00 in the afternoon?
MotoGP race time.
In the next 45 minutes,
Wheel to wheel, side by side
at 200 miles an hour.
What's gonna happen?
On a good day, the answer doesn't
come until the very end.
The race is a battle
to the finish line.
June 15th, 2009
was a very good day.
The Catalan Grand Prix,
two laps to go.
Thirty-year-old Italian
multiple MotoGP champion
Valentino Rossi,
against his 21-year-old Spanish
teammate, Jorge Lorenzo.
"Teammate" is a
misleading term.
They are bitter rivals
in the same colors
on the same bikes.
Rossi is used to
being number one.
Lorenzo wants to be.
Lorenzo has won two of the
five races so far this season,
the champion only one.
Now, Rossi faces losing to Lorenzo in
front of the Spaniard's home crowd
and losing another five points
to him in the championship.
Victory would put
Rossi level on points.
More importantly, it would
put Lorenzo in his place,
at least for the time being.
A hundred thousand fans are watching
the battle around the track,
millions more on TV
around the world.
Here he
comes, down the straight,
Jorge Lorenzo's
gonna go through,
and he's gone through
Valentino Rossi.
Lorenzo brakes,
closes the door.
Very smart move, fairing
to fairing in the chicane.
He's trying to get past.
Jorge won't let him.
Final lap. Lorenzo in
front, Rossi behind.
Attention, attention. They've
been together all race long.
Of all those
watching, nobody knows better
than Rossi's own team where his
last chances to overtake are.
Faster, faster,
faster here!
Go, go!
More, more faster!
Rossi's best chance
is in the next few corners.
From Turn 10 onwards
it's all but impossible.
Haifa lap
to go here at Barcelona-
Jorge's beating him
hand to hand.
It's crazy, he'll be
leading the championship.
Go Valentino, go!
Head to head.
Lorenzo's carrying
a lot of speed out of Turn 9.
There's no way
through there.
Oh, mamma mia!
Mamma mia! Mamma mia!
On the inside,
Jorge's really got him.
Three corners to win
the Catalan Grand Prix.
He said
to me before this weekend,
if you go into
these corners first,
you know you're
gonna win the race.
Almost impossible. Very, very difficult.
Lorenzo ahead, Rossi behind.
There's no room here.
When Jorge
closed the door on me in Turn 9,
I say, "Fuck, I have to
try in the last corner."
But I don't know
if I crash.
And I hope, if I crash, we
crash together. Not alone.
And from that moment, I tried to
stay very, very, very close to him.
And I know I have a small
chance on the last corner.
It is strange
because I thought, "Okay, if
I can be the maximum fast,
"the maximum quick I can be
in the last two corners,
"he can't overtake me."
I just ride to go fast,
so some part of me thought, "Okay,
Valentino is going to try."
So, I didn't want to close
more, because Valentino is...
He's going to try the same.
So, maybe we could crash.
And another
part of me thought,
"Valentino is not
going to try,
"it's impossible
to pass there."
The surprise
was the important thing,
because also
Jorge don't expect.
When we arrived
to the last corner,
I said, "I have to brake a little bit
later than him, but not too much."
So, when he brake, I brake a bit
later, like five, six meters later,
and I try to put my bike
at 180 kilometers an hour
in 35 centimeters.
And I say,
"Maybe now I crash."
At the maximum braking,
when I go to the apex,
I feel the front go away.
And I say, "Please, don't
slide more because we crash."
But the front stayed.
The Bridgestone
front tire is a great tire.
What a race. He's got one corner left.
He's going for the inside.
And Rossi, he manages
something in the final corner.
I don't believe it.
I can't believe it.
He's done it.
I can't believe it.
It's impossible. Bravo!
And we arrived on the finish line
like this, but a little bit in front.
And it was
a great emotion.
What a race.
What a pass.
How did he do it?
Rossi's done it.
Valentino Rossi is one
of the most incredible riders...
I make
a really good race-
The only mistake I made
was in the last corner.
You always have something to
learn every day in racing.
Rossi!
They come and they go.
And they go as fast
as they possibly can.
For over 60 years, the fastest
motorcycle racers in the world
have dreamed
the same dream.
To win at the highest level.
The Grand Prix
World Championship.
Most of them last
a few seasons.
A rare few,
a decade or more.
And some,
just a few races.
Most walk away.
Some do not.
Safer now than it was,
but how can it ever be safe?
Wheel to wheel at 200 miles
an hour on a motorcycle.
People die doing this.
But most of them live.
Really live.
Over 750 riders
since 1949,
all brave, all fast,
and almost all destined to fail
at the ultimate challenge.
In 60 years, only 24 riders have won
the premier class world championship.
Of them, a few
won multiple titles.
And at the very summit of the
sport stand just two men
who have won the title
more than five times each,
Giacomo Agostini, who raced
in the '60s and the '70s
and took the premier
class crown eight times.
And Valentino Rossi, on his way
to his seventh title in 2009.
How many more races?
How many more
championships can he win?
Is he the greatest of all time?
Time will tell.
But for every year
that you push your bike
and your body
to the limit,
you push your luck
to the limit, as well.
You can't be
the fastest forever.
And when the red lights go
out, nobody's looking back.
The past is behind you.
And there's only
one question.
Who's fastest now?
I like to ride
motorcycles- I enjoy a lot-
I go in the best
circuit in the world
with the best bike
in the world,
try to go
as fast as possible.
Until I have this taste
and this passion
for riding motorcycles,
why I have
to stay at home?
Rossi won six of
the 18 Grand Prixs in 2009,
Lorenzo, four.
Another world championship
for the Italian
and a step closer for Lorenzo,
who finished second.
Valentino has won
a lot of world titles.
And Valentino has done a lot of
things for the motorcycle sport.
So, you must have
a lot of respect for him.
But for me,
he is not a god.
If you work really hard,
if your technique is extremely
good, then you can beat him.
As important as winning
races, is not crashing out of them.
In 2009, Rossi failed to finish
only once, at Indianapolis.
At the next Grand Prix
in San Marino, his home race,
he mocked his stupid-ass mistake at
Indy with a special helmet design
and a victory celebration
to go with it.
Lorenzo crashed
out of four races in 2009.
There goes up to 100 points
in the championship.
You can't afford to crash, and
you can't afford to get hurt.
But both are inevitable.
Where do MotoGP riders
go in the winter?
Onto the dirt for fun,
and they say, for fitness.
Training in
motocross is very important.
For physical, for mental,
it's very important.
And motocross is very fun,
I like a lot motocross.
Valentino will not race
motocross anymore.
I have big, big pressure from
my father that say always,
"No, you don't go
with motocross.
"You're stupid.
It's too dangerous."
I think a lot of MotoGP riders
have injury with motocross.
Because we have
the mind to go fast,
but we don't have
the technique.
Motocross is very
dangerous for the jumps,
it's more dangerous
for the bumps.
When we crash with MotoGP
on the asphalt, you slide.
Sometimes in motocross in the
mud, you crash and you stop.
2010, the French Grand
Prix, third race of the season.
Valentino Rossi
is walking wounded.
He injured his shoulder
in a motocross crash in Italy
a few days after winning the
first MotoGP race in Qatar.
Valentino understands
with this accident
that motocross is not the
right way to drive the bike.
I have a small crack
to the bone, here,
but I think now
the bone is okay,
because it's more
than one month.
Jorge Lorenzo
finished second in Qatar,
riding with a broken thumb
after a pre-season crash
on a dirt bike.
He won the next
race in Spain,
ahead of his compatriot
and archrival, Dani Pedrosa.
Touching in the last corner
and beating him in the last lap
has been 100% adrenaline.
Lorenzo then staged
a post-race celebration
to rival Rossi's
own theatrics.
At Le Mans, MotoGP
rookie Alvaro Bautista
is also walking wounded after a
motocross accident a week earlier.
When I crashed, I
thought, "Okay, I broke."
I'm here because I think
I can try to ride. No?
Bautista had a compound fracture of his
left clavicle operated on a week ago.
He also had thoracic
bruising and broken ribs.
He wants to ride, and
that is quite incredible.
Bautista is one of
six MotoGP rookies in 2010.
They may be new to MotoGP, but
they're not new to each other.
They've raced each other for years
in the junior MotoGP categories.
Bautista and fellow Spaniard,
Hctor Barber
have some history with the
Italian, Marco Simoncelli.
I like a lot
when there is a physical fight
in the last lap,
to try to win the race.
You fight with the
other rider, you touch.
During the race, you want
to kill the other rider,
but after the race,
you give him the hand,
and you go to drink
a beer together.
Okay, you are fighting
and you want to pass bad.
I think he is different, because
he's very ready to hit you.
Every time something happens,
they come to the race direction,
and they say,
"Simoncelli touched me.
"You have to
disqualify him."
And for me, it's not the true
spirit of the motorcycle race.
For me, it's normal.
And also, if you see, Lorenzo and
Pedrosa in the last race touched,
but nobody say nothing.
Simoncelli
sometimes is very hard.
I am his friend, so with
me, he is more soft.
But especially with Bautista,
Barbera, always hard, hard fight.
But he says they are girls.
Yes.
The rookies have graduated
from 150 mile-an-hour
lightweight machines
to 170 mile-an-hour
middleweights.
Now, it's time to go racing on
There are no better riders than
the men they are up against,
and there are no faster bikes.
This is it.
The beginning of the
season, it was quite difficult.
In Malaysia, I crashed,
I had a big crash.
It was a very
strange crash,
because entering the corner,
I lose the front of my bike
and with the leg, I pick up
the bike for some meters,
but after, the bike
retake the grip,
and I had a very
bad high side.
After that moment, I don't
remember very well what happened.
I am afraid
when I crash
and I understand that
I can do nothing.
So, in this moment,
I am a little bit afraid,
not little bit afraid.
The sixth MotoGP
rookie is American Ben Spies.
Unlike the others, he's come from
the world of superbike racing
and has the most
to learn in MotoGP.
The Grand Prix tracks, riders and
machines are all new to him.
On the other side
of the track,
Bautista has an even
worse high side crash,
where the rear wheel slides
sideways, and then regains grip
and flicks the rider
into the air.
Meanwhile, Simoncelli experiences
the much preferred low side fall,
where the front
wheel slides out
and the rider drops just
a few inches to the ground.
The rider has decided
not to ride in Le Mans
and be ready for the
next race in Mugello.
Ben Spies had a big fall with bruising to
his foot and dislocation of the ankle.
If all goes well, and he has the heart
I saw today, he will do the race.
Pedrosa,
two quick laps on the mount,
puts a 10th of a second into
Valentino Rossi, who's second,
Stoner,
who's now third.
To the last lap
for Jorge Lorenzo.
Still,
it's Valentino Rossi
with just a five-hundredth
of-a-second advantage
on the pole position,
ahead of Jorge Lorenzo.
Here's Casey Stoner,
It's gonna be touch and go
whether Casey gets on the front row.
I don't think he's gonna be
able to get on the front row.
I can't see it. No way.
I can't see it either.
Pole. It's the first pole of 2010.
It's Valentino Rossi.
Didn't think
he'd be able to do that
at the beginning
of the session, Julian.
He was quite
a way back.
But how many times have we been
fooled by Valentino Rossi?
"Giacomo, watch out,
just 18 races left. "
"Thank you, Stefania,"
who is mum.
That's a very Italian sort of
thing, a thank you to the mother.
Valentino is a student
of history, he knows very well,
and he knows he's within
range of Agostini's records.
He wants to say, "I won
the most Grand Prixs ever."
He's on 104 at the moment
here in late May, 2010.
He's got 123 to get
to beatAgostini's 122.
Valentino is now 31,
and he's having to
dig very deep indeed
to fight off these youngsters, who
are immune to his mind games.
Rossi is still the king.
We're looking for the person
who is going to depose him.
On Sunday, one of the worst
parts is the nerves you feel.
There is something important
that is gonna happen.
I hate this feeling.
Meditation
helped me a lot,
I just turn on the sunglasses
and I hear my music
and I just close
my eyes and relax.
Like Bruce Lee, no?
Be water, my friend
I always feel a
personal connection with the bike,
because I think
the bike has a soul.
I always make a personal
feeling together.
I always speak
with the bike.
When the bike arrive in January,
it is like with a girlfriend.
MotoGP is a team sport. But
when you start for the race,
for the crucial moment, you
are alone with your bike.
When you are on the
track, you have to be flowing,
and you have to be
enjoying the moment.
Be water, my friend.
You go for the finish line, and
you try to be the fastest.
And it seems
a little bit stupid,
20 riders making the
same way, lap by lap.
But this simple thing
is very complicated.
It's very important to be
faster, but also to be clever, quiet
and don't feel
a lot of the pressure.
I think motorcycle
racing is more fun,
because with motorcycles,
it's more a battle sport
with the other guys.
I follow the philosophy
of thinking outside the race.
But when you are on the bike,
when you are riding,
it's better not to think and
to act with your instincts.
If you're always thinking
about your competitors,
you don't put your limit
higher and higher.
Today,
if I have to be honest,
it was easier than I expected.
It is very important for me,
because it gives me the confidence
that I can win
two races in a row.
It seems that
he is always happy,
because he is
a really good actor.
He knows how to create this
good feeling with the people,
with the people who
are looking at the TV.
But every human has bad
moments in his life,
and for sure, he was
not very comfortable
when he had been defeated
two races in a row with me
in the same bike.
So for sure, he goes into the Mugello
Grand Prix with some pressure.
Young people are coming,
but how close we are from
Valentino, we don't know.
We will know
at the end of the year.
After six seasons
in the smaller MotoGP classes
and double 250cc
World Championships,
Jorge Lorenzo moved up
to the premier class in 2008.
His debut was nothing
less than astonishing.
A seven-race odyssey
from heaven to hell.
I made pole position in the first
race of my life in MotoGP.
I finished second
in the race.
I repeated with the pole
position in the second race.
I finished third.
And I won the third race,
also in the pole position.
For me, it was so easy
and I was beating all the
riders in my first year.
I didn't understand
why it's so easy.
The China Grand Prix, I didn't
get a good pace suddenly, no?
So, I feel that
I must push.
It was a terrific crash.
I broke two ankles.
The day after, I finished
fourth in the practice.
The day after, I also
finished fourth in the race.
I crashed during the
practice on Le Mans,
the next race
after China.
I crashed, but I didn't fail
this race. I finished second.
But when I crashed in
Montmelo, I got unconscious.
Like a boxer, when...
Yeah.
I didn't remember anything.
Then I realized
what I was doing.
I realized that if I continued
like that, maybe I can die.
So then it comes,
the fear.
Some riders, after big crashes,
they get this fear of the bike
and they never
go fast again.
And they must retire.
Some others...
Maybe I am of this other,
take this disadvantage
and make this an advantage.
He was in here with
concussion for almost a week.
It scared him a bit.
All of us feel fear. The
thing is to overcome it.
Lorenzo had another
huge crash at the US Grand Prix.
He came back to take
two podium finishes
in the second half
of the season,
and finished his first year
in MotoGP in fourth position.
Here, motorcycles are more
important than football.
Here, motorcycles
are number one.
We were hoping
for a great rider,
and we got the greatest.
The miracle of Valentino.
Valentino and his motorcycle
flying towards the stars.
He was tiny when
he first came here,
and he collected
Japanese toy figurines.
He always loved
Japanese things.
He was not a normal child.
At three, he was riding
bikes with Graziano.
Not normal.
Valentino could have
done something else.
But his father led him to it
when he was four years old.
I didn't push him,
you understand?
This happened
without saying.
He was the despair
of the police.
When he races, we all dream. When
he races, everything changes.
I love watching the races.
I had a Lambretta motorcycle.
Number 46,
from my father.
The first race he won,
he had 46, in '79,
the year I was born
so I don't change,
because all the people
know me for the 46.
And it's easy. If you switch on the
television and see, "Ah! 46, Rossi!"
My phone number
is 90-12-46.
Valentino is and always
will be a humble person
from Tavullia, like us.
Except he's a bit special.
We had it specially
printed in Milan.
And we told Valentino,
"You have to unroll it. "
He said, "How long is it?"
Twenty-five meters.
He said, "So long!" We said,
"Don't win so much! "
The most special was the first
podium when he was very small.
He's pulling away
! Victory at last for Valentino Rossi!
Whoa! And he almost swipes
the wall in his delight!
That was the moment
we knew he was a real racer.
It is fantastic for me!
I tried to push very hard.
Push very hard, pushed very hard.
It was very funny. And I win.
Ipushed. Win the
championship with a victory.
I pushed very hard.
We made a very hard fight.
I pushed and I pushed
and I pushed. It's very good.
I'm the second rider in
history to arrive at 100
with Giacomo Agostini.
I'm so happy, but I hope
to have some other season
for increasing the number, and
for a fight with the other guys.
Thanks a lot to everybody.
All his races
are beautiful.
Especially Welkom
when he beat Biaggi.
The first year that
he rode the Yamaha
which Biaggi
said was no good.
In 2003, Rossi's archrival,
Max Biaggi, left Yamaha for Honda,
saying that the Yamaha
was no good
and that he needed a Honda
like Rossi's to win.
Rossi was invincible
on the Honda,
taking three world
championships in a row.
In 2003, he and the other Honda
riders won 15 of the 16 races.
Loris Capirossi won
the 16th on a Ducati.
Biaggi had a point.
Honda was the
most competitive bike.
It was the team where
everybody wanted to be.
And, we as Yamaha, especially during
I started to
manage the MotoGP in 2003.
But our bike and our organization,
everything's very bad.
As a factory team, we didn't
achieve one single podium.
So we've never been
a top three in any race.
So it was a very tough
year, even more tough
was trying to convince Valentino
to join that manufacturer.
I am here to say
thank you very much to Honda
and to say also,
unfortunately,
next year we don't
race together.
A fantastic period for me,
three world championships.
Maybe making this choice at this
point is a little bit crazy.
I thought it was a joke.
But he had some trouble with
the previous manufacturer.
Rossi was winning
world championships
and earning tens of millions
of dollars at Honda.
But he felt like a prisoner,
the prisoner of a company
which held the bike to be
more important than the rider.
The prisoner of PR obligations
and corporate orders.
With the Honda, he knew
he could always win.
But he said, "I'm winning,
but I'm not having fun.
"I prefer to have fun
than win again."
That's important.
Not many people
will leave a sure thing
for something uncertain,
like the Yamaha.
Yamaha offered Rossi
what he wanted, freedom.
All he had to do was show
up and ride the bike
with the added incentive
that everybody knew
that the Yamaha was
an inferior machine.
Everybody
was saying that
he was winning just because
he had the best bike.
Easy to win with that bike,
and he didn't like that.
So, he wanted
to challenge that.
Valentino wanted to show
the reasons of him winning
is himself, not the bike.
So he came to me and
talked about that story.
So, I was really hungry
to get the win.
So that was a good time to talk to
each other, to make a good bike.
In Masao Furusawa,
Rossi had the engineering genius
he needed to redesign
the Yamaha.
Now, he just needed
the mechanical genius
to optimize the bike
for each race,
his crew chief at Honda,
Jeremy Burgess,
the only man in MotoGP with more
world titles to his name than Rossi.
You're always trying to give
him the best bike for the job.
The motorcycle is a tool
to assist an individual
to do what he loves to do.
My job is, essentially, to sharpen
the tool so he can do it.
The Australian
prepared the bikes
for Wayne Gardner
and Mick Doohan,
taking six world titles with
them, and then three with Rossi.
But always with Honda.
My team say, at the beginning,
"You are fucking crazy
"to go with Yamaha!
We'll remain with Honda.
"It's a lot
more easy."
You only meet one
Valentino Rossi in your life.
We could be racing
lawn mowers, you know?
I do it because
I love to win,
and he's the guy
we can win with.
Honda held Rossi
to his contract to the end
so that he couldn't test the Yamaha
at all until the year was out,
putting his new team at a further
disadvantage going into 2004.
Nobody expected us to do
any good the first year,
particularly the first race.
Realistically, you think,
nobody could win
on that bike.
Biaggi just holds firm.
Rossi very, very close indeed.
Biaggi runs it wide an inch,
Rossi will be through.
But there's no way through at the
moment for the Yamaha rider.
Time's up,
Rossi goes through.
There was an inch,
and Rossi's done it.
And there's nothing
Biaggi can do about it.
They brake for
the left-hander!
Rossi's just a little
bit out of shape,
but somehow he hangs
on to the Yamaha.
I mean, Valentino put in an
extra effort to win that race.
Rossi's gonna do it!
Valentino Rossi wins
the African Grand Prix
from Max Biaggi!
There was a lot of
emotion in that first weekend
for him to win on that bike.
Trust me, it wasn't a given.
That victory
cemented the Rossi legend.
No one had ever
done this before,
win the last race of the year
for one manufacturer,
and the first race of the
next season for another.
It also buried Biaggi
as a serious challenger.
He won only
one more Grand Prix
and was left without a MotoGP
ride at the end of 2005.
I have the 2004 bike of Welkom,
the real one, in my bathroom?
Bedroom! Bedroom, sorry!
It's in the bedroom.
No, it's not in the toilet.
It's in the bedroom.
Every morning, when I
wake up, I see my bike,
and I have some socks
sometimes on the bike,
but anyways,
it's a great memory.
He's a charmer,
you know? He's star material,
whatever sport
he'd be in.
But apart from that,
he's a ruthless killer.
I always feel people
need reminding of that.
He really is a savage
competitor,
not in a way of
being dangerous,
but of being very dedicated to
winning, at almost any cost.
Sete Gibernau leads.
Look at the crowd!
One hundred twenty-seven thousand
Spaniards go absolutely crazy.
Into the right-hander!
Rossi's got the inside.
Rossi's back in front,
he runs it wide.
Now, who has the first position for
the right-hander? It's Gibernau.
Rossi's surely gonna try and
get up the inside of Gibernau.
Gibernau holds
the pole position.
They brake for the left-hander.
Rossi up the inside!
They touch!
Oh, they touched.
Rossi. Gibernau's
running wide.
Rossi's punted him
off the track!
Rossi's gonna take victory
in the Spanish Grand Prix!
Gibernau's in the gravel.
Can he get back on the track
in time to take second?
Do they get any
better than that?
That was a strong move.
Yeah.
That was a Simoncelli move.
We're just seeing it again,
the replay here, and I don't know,
Rossi is very, very deep.
As you say, his foot came off.
You can see the contact here
better than anywhere else, but...
It was the
last corner, you know?
You have to try.
The Spanish crowd here,
the whole stand in front
of me are singing fuera,
which means "out. " They want
Rossi banned from this race.
It's thumbs down all the way
in front of me here.
They're whistling and
booing Valentino Rossi.
What a start
to the season!
If you're a racer, actually, all
that matters is winning, isn't it?
What he's here
to do is win.
Look at the way
he destroyed Max Biaggi.
He destroyed
Sete Gibernau.
This is motorcycle,
and it's very good that
you have a hard fight,
like, in my case,
with Biaggi, with Gibernau,
and especially, at the end,
with Stoner in Laguna Seca.
Rossi and Gibernau
had been feuding for a while.
In 2004,
Rossi vowed that the Spaniard
would never win another race.
Gibernau never did.
He left the sport
for good in 2009.
Casey Stoner
is a different story.
He beat Rossi fair
and square in 2007,
winning 10 races
to Rossi's four.
This was the first year of the
new 800cc MotoGP formula,
Stoner's first year on the Ducati,
and only his second in MotoGP.
The Australian on the Italian
bike took everybody by surprise,
including himself.
Qatar, there's
no way we thought
we were gonna win
the world championship,
but we went out there
and we won the first race,
we won the third race,
we won the fourth race.
Epic battle at the front.
Stoner tries it in the
right-hander, through turn three.
A long radius, right-hander.
And Stoner's through.
Till now, I think,
the Stoner of two years ago
has been the fastest
Valentino met,
because it was so difficult to
understand why Stoner was so fast.
Stoner leads the way!
Rossi's gonna try to
get back to the front.
Rossi back in front, but
he runs a little bit wide.
I think so,
Stoner goes back in front.
I think it wasn't till
maybe race eight or nine
that we were
starting to go,
"Okay, we've actually got a
shot at the championship here."
Casey Stoner wins
the Grand Prix at Catalunyal
What a race!
On top of that, Stoner's
world championship on the Ducati
was the first time in over 30 years
that a European manufacturer
had beaten the Japanese
in the premier class.
Stoner
has a great talent,
and sometimes it's
impressive how fast he is.
In three laps, he made
the lap record, as you say.
Impressive, but if you work step by
step, it's possible to fight with him.
Nine races
into the 2008 season,
Rossi was leading
the championship.
But Stoner was on a winning
streak and closing in fast.
At Laguna Seca,
where he triumphed in 2007
and where Ross:
had never won,
the Australian was
fastest in practice
and starting the race
from pole position.
He looked unbeatable.
In Laguna, at that point, Casey had
won three races in succession,
and we had to stop that run,
and it looked like
he was going to win
another one,
and this is what
Casey thought.
Clearly, that was the thing that we
had to attack, was Casey's belief
that it was a foregone conclusion
he would win the race.
Casey started for
that race sure to win,
because he had more than
half-a-second-per-lap advantage.
But when he discovered that he'd
have to battle with me so hard,
he didn't expect it, you know?
So, this was important.
A lot of things weren't
shown during that race, on camera,
that happened over the
back part of the circuit.
Rossi knew he didn't have
the speed to stay with Stoner.
So he had to try and get
in front of him early
and counter attack at once
if Stoner got back past.
If Stoner broke away,
he'd be gone.
Stoner was
unbelievable in Laguna,
and I knew that I had
to stay in front.
In his desperation
to stay ahead, Rossi overshot,
dropping into the 10-story
downhill chicane
known as the "Corkscrew."
And the Corkscrew
incident was nothing.
That was Valentino
making a huge mistake,
running wide,
going off the track,
holding it wide open
and getting lucky
that he didn't fling himself
into one of the barriers
and into me.
From the bike,
it was quite scary.
During the practice,
I did the same mistake.
And I know that it don't have
deep sand, but just some dirt.
So when I drove over
there in the racetrack,
I say, "Maybe it's okay,
because I already
"try one time in the practice.
But I don't want to try it. "
Just made a mistake,
you know?
There's been
some moments
when Valentino rides really
hard and aggressive.
But he's as clean
as a whistle.
He doesn't do
anything wrong.
And then there's
other moments where
he seems to leave his
brain somewhere else,
and he'll just plant it
into the side of someone
I just don't think it's correct.
It's not a contact sport.
But Stoner complained
with me, but I never touched Stoner.
So, you know, what happened
in Laguna was a great battle.
And unfortunately, when you
lose this great battle...
It means,
"You're very angry."
Stoner complained,
but in general,
he don't know why he complained
because I never touched him.
Yeah, there's the saying,
"What goes around, comes around."
So, you know,
we'll see what happens.
If people keep getting away
with what they are these days,
then it's gonna get quite extreme.
Something's gonna go wrong.
Stoner's 2008 challenge
faltered after Laguna.
He crashed out of
the next two races
when he was leading
from Rossi.
I think Stoner...
The thing you have to question
is his mental strength.
Rossi went on
to win the championship,
becoming only the second
rider in history
to regain the crown after
losing it two years in a row.
The only other man to do
this, Giacomo Agostini.
Stoner's fortunes, meanwhile,
took a strange turn.
After winning 10 races in
and then in 2009,
just four.
At Catalunya, in 2009, the day of
Rossi's last corner pass on Lorenzo,
something was
clearly wrong.
You saw him in the
paddock and went, "My God!
"You actually
should be in hospital.
"You look that pale,
that drawn. "
And it was getting to him.
He couldn't talk to anybody,
you know, one autograph
hunter would freak him out.
Then Stoner did what tough
guy racers aren't supposed to do.
In the middle of the season,
he packed up and went home.
It's better for me to pull
out and try and fix the problem.
And then, it took us a long
time to figure it out.
The reaction of the other
riders to that was very interesting.
They're absolutely
flabbergasted,
that he should
stop in the middle.
You just don't do that.
How do you have the mindset
that allows you to do that?
Casey came back
very strong,
but the question mark
is always gonna be there.
The Casey we got back,
completely different person.
Stoner was finally
diagnosed with lactose intolerance.
With the lactose intolerance,
I was getting that tired,
and that worn out on the
bike after five laps
that I was struggling to go
in on the braking points.
I wasn't able to get out
of the way of someone
if I was caught in the
middle of a few riders,
and it might've been
a tricky situation.
I'm 100% now.
He's puzzling, you know.
I'd say he's very much always
a championship contender.
But then he does these puzzling
things, like go off for three months
or ride like a hot-headed
Moto2 maniac, you know?
He puzzled everyone
some more by coming back
and winning his home
Grand Prix in Australia
and the next race
in Malaysia,
before crashing out of the last
race of 2009 on the warm-up lap.
He crashed out of the first
race of 2010 while leading,
and he crashed out
at Le Mans.
I wanna try and win, and
people will criticize me for that,
but racing isn't always
about the championships.
It's a bonus at
the end of the season.
I'm out there and I'm
out there to win races,
get the best result
I possibly can in each race.
Of course, sometimes
the mistakes come.
Unlike Stoner and Lorenzo, Valentino
Rossi has never missed a Grand Prix.
He's done every single
race since March, 1996.
That was 15 years ago, and
he's not yet missed a race.
I was very close sometimes.
Valencia 2007, I had injury,
but always try to resist.
This is like a legend,
that I have never have pain,
but I broke a lot of things
like the other riders.
Hands, fingers, ankles.
One of the worst of my career
and the big, big pain...
And I remember the feeling of
pain everywhere in the body,
because I did the change of
direction before the last chicane,
and that is sixth gear,
it's 265 kilometers per hour,
and when I
changed direction,
and I hold the bike
on the left of the tire,
the tires start and make
a very bad high side.
And I have the time,
when I fly, to say,
"Mamma mia, what's happened?
Now is a big, big crash!"
And when I go down and
start tumble afterwards,
it's like 30 people kick you,
you know, all together.
And broke the hand,
it was a very bad crash,
and a very stupid
mistake from myself,
because I needed
to wait more.
There are far fewer serious
injuries than 10 or 20 years ago.
The injuries now are usually to
the extremities of the skeleton,
the bones of the hand,
the feet, the shoulder
and especially
the collarbone.
Rossi raced two days later
with broken bones in his hand and wrist,
and finished eighth.
2006 was the year things
started going wrong for him.
After five consecutive
MotoGP world titles,
Rossi was the clear favorite
to win the championship.
Then Toni Elias knocks him
off in the first race,
and tire and mechanical failures put
him out of another three Grand Prixs.
Valentino Rossi,
seven and a half laps to go,
is out of the
French Grand Prix.
Midway through the season,
when he crashed and broke his hand
in practice,
for the Dutch Grand Prix,
he was trailing the American
Nicky Hayden by 43 points.
Rossi fought back in the
second half of the season,
and was just 18 points
behind the American
going into the penultimate
race in Portugal.
He came out of that weekend
with an eight-point lead,
after Hayden's own teammate,
Dani Pedrosa, knocked him off.
I thought it was over, man.
I thought it was 25 years
of hard work out the window,
and my dream of being
world champion was done.
I've never felt pain
like that in my life.
It came in a bad moment,
especially for him, but it was racing.
It never happened before to me,
and it never happened again.
But it came
right finally so...
We were in the
motor home after I crashed,
and we were watching
the race, and I was like,
"Oh, my God, Toni's about to
nip him at the line here."
And that just gave me
a feeling that,
"You know what,
this ain't over. "
That's five points, that
adds a whole new dimension.
I never pulled for a guy
so hard in my life.
The final twist came at Valencia,
where Rossi did what nobody expected.
He crashed.
The worst moment of my career,
except when you crash and you have pain.
I was very, very fast and
I did the pole position,
but at the same time,
I had an impressive race
pace with the race tires.
Pam! Pam! Pam!
Very fast, the bike was okay.
Sunday, nothing worked. I didn't
have the same grip from the tires.
Rossi looked like
he bogged it, a bit off the line.
He's back in the field
there a bit.
And when I start for the race,
the bike was impossible to ride.
Hayden up
the inside of Capirossi.
Hayden now
up into third place.
And there is Valentino Ross! just get
a glimpse of that yellow helmet-
He's not where
he wants to be.
For me, something
strange happened with the tire.
The tires were not
the same of Saturday,
I think,
but you never know.
Valentino Rossi is gonna
have to produce the ride of his life
if he is gonna
win the 2006...
Oh! Rossi's gone down!
Rossi's down,
Rossi is down.
The reality is I lose the
championship and Nicky win.
Hayden finished third
and won the world championship,
proving that absolutely
anything can happen,
even after you get taken
out by your teammate
and you're eight points
behind Valentino Rossi
going into the final race.
Rossi lost the championship
by five points,
the difference between
first and second in Portugal,
where Toni Elias beat him.
Toni Elias,
the man who knocked him off in
Jerez at the start of the season.
Toni, my boy Toni, did me
the biggest favor ever.
I mean, I always have a soft
spot in my heart for that guy.
How dangerous is MotoGP?
And where exactly
is the danger?
Rossi's crashes offer two answers.
A machine problem,
the Valencia crash was due
to an electronic fault,
and the most common
cause, human error.
In Holland, Rossi had
not waited long enough
for the rear tire to get up
to optimum temperature.
So it lacked grip.
They may resemble superheroes
in their high-tech race suits,
but the riders are
human and breakable.
Motorsport is supposed
to be dangerous,
but not too dangerous. It's a
bit of a tightrope, really.
And you'd have to say that
the improvement in safety
over the last 20 years
of motorbike racing
has been
absolutely fantastic.
When riders crash nowadays,
serious injury is less
likely than it used to be
because of the improvements
in track safety
with huge runoff areas,
and the protective
equipment the riders wear,
which now includes
crash-activated airbags,
as well as body armor
beneath the leather.
In recent years, some
riders have crashed
20 or 30 times in a season
without serious injury.
Carlos held the record for
the most crashes in one season,
like 28 crashes
or something.
Exactly, I don't know,
but it was around 30.
I stopped counting.
They fall a lot
at the beginning.
When they're on small bikes,
they fall a lot.
Then they stabilize, and when they're
older, they start to fall again.
The champions
fall very rarely, though.
Even 30 years ago, when the
tracks were not at all safe
and there were
far more fatalities,
the best riders
rarely died on the track.
All the premier class champions,
from 1960 to the present day,
survived their
motorcycle racing careers.
Making very few mistakes is one of the
defining qualities of a champion.
In two of his
championship-winning years,
Rossi finished every single
race, and in the others,
he never crashed out
more than twice.
To be
a successful racer,
you have to have a strong
sense of self-preservation
and an overweening confidence
in your own ability.
They are human men,
but humans of a rare type,
something like
fighter pilots
with their extraordinary
hand-eye coordination,
their cool heads
in a fight,
the combination of extreme
discipline in training and testing,
and the willingness to risk it
all when the moment demands it.
But no matter
how good you are,
and no matter how great the
improvements to tracks and equipment,
things can still
go badly wrong.
With solo crashes,
you might break a hand,
but serious injuries
are very rare.
When they're in a group, and there is a
faller, the others can run him over.
That's the biggest danger.
Catalunya, 2006, lap one,
heading into Turn 1
at over 150 miles an hour.
Sete Gibernau clips the back
of Loris Capirossi's Ducati.
I was right
behind Sete when it happened.
He started braking, and he was
braking on the white line
that separated the track
from the pit lane entrance.
And I think that kind of
spooked him a little bit,
and he tried to get
off the white line.
As he tried to do that,
he just
ventured over into Capirossi, and
hit his front brake and then
it was assholes
and elbows after that.
Once all the
carnage started,
I just remember
seeing Melandri
stuck up the back
of somebody's rear wheel,
basically trying
to rip his arm off.
When I came in,
I'm pretty sure I was
a couple of shades whiter than
what I am right now because
I thought I'd just watched Melandri
get completely offed.
He was fine, you know.
But it was a pretty
gnarly crash for sure.
At Assen in 2008,
John Hopkins crashed in the same
corner as Rossi two years earlier,
but this was
a machine failure.
It sent him off the track
at an unexpected angle,
straight into the wall.
It was such an
odd place where I had crashed
because it was a bike
mechanical failure,
and one of the forks actually didn't
compress when I went in to brake,
so that the front just slid and I
went off in fifth gear, wide open,
and the data said that, at top
speed, right when I crashed,
I was doing
So I hit the wall at over
That's like falling from an airplane
and just hitting the concrete.
Thank God I hit it
with my feet first.
I blew out my knee and
busted my ankle and stuff,
but had I been headfirst,
I would have broken my neck
and would've been
dead for sure.
That definitely frightened me, man.
That scared me a lot.
John Hopkins was lucky.
Daijiro Kato, who died
in a freak accident
at the Japanese Grand Prix
in 2003, was unlucky.
Shoya Tomizawa, an emerging
star in the new Moto2 category,
will be unlucky.
In September, 2010,
five months after winning
his first Grand Prix in Qatar,
he will lose his life
in a freak accident
at the San Marino race,
struck by two other bikes after he
fell directly in front of them.
It's that kind of reality
that you don't want to see,
because you don't think
it will happen to you.
It's something, you know it's
there, but it's better not to look.
Mugello
belongs to Valentino Rossi.
He's won nine Grand Prixs
in all classes here,
including seven consecutively
in the premier class.
It's a special
place for him,
and he always brings
something special to wear.
Mugello is the classic
special helmet of the year.
Many times,
he was able to do the best
with the special helmets.
The face was the most famous
special helmet of Valentino.
To be honest,
a few days before,
we have no idea about what can
be the next special helmet.
I asked him
to talk about Mugello.
We was talking
about Casanova-Savelli,
you know, there is that
going down to the hill.
And then he show me, when you
go down, the face you have...
Yeah, and he makes
a special face
and they say,
"Do it one more time."
He do it, I take
a picture and I said,
"Okay, that is the new
helmet for Mugello. "
We are working with a lot of
riders and for everyone, I think,
to have the right color
or the right cartoon
or something that
they have in their heart,
maybe one image,
maybe one special sign,
makes the rider
more comfortable.
The story of humanity is full
of these kinds of things.
The soldiers,
the cavaliers in the past,
the Indians in America,
they take colors
with the hands
and put it on
the face to be strong,
to be more aggressive or maybe
to take away their fear.
So, the colors, they can help
a man to be more strong.
It's like when
Superman put the suit on.
So when I put my yellow leather
suit, it's not just protection,
but also
psychological effect.
A MotoGP bike is a
machine with a human at one end
and a small patch
of rubber at the other.
In the middle is an engine generating
an enormous amount of power.
The job of the rider
and his team is to figure out
how to get as much of
that power to the ground
for as much of
every lap as possible.
The bikes are pure prototypes,
costing tens of millions of dollars
and created
exclusively for racing.
These are the numbers,
the minimum machinery
for the maximum performance,
far more power-to-weight
than a Formula One car,
more speed, too.
Over 210 miles an hour
at tracks like Mugello,
where an F1 car
tops out at 200.
The big difference
is that, in the car racing,
they are able to understand all
the things from the computer,
because the driver
is stuck on the car.
In the bike, it's a lot more difficult
to understand what's happened,
because more movement of the rider
changes all the balance of the bike.
For this reason, it's more
important, the experience
and the indication
of the rider.
In Italian, the word for a
motorcycle racer is centauro, a centaur,
the mythical animal
that is half-man, half-horse.
But it's no myth.
A MotoGP bike is a prosthetic
limb for speed freaks.
The engineer's job
is to make the bike
an extension of
the rider's body,
moving in every
direction with him,
giving him the feedback
he needs to go faster.
When I was a small kid,
I really wanted to be
an airplane engineer.
But after World War II,
we are kind of forbidden to make
airplanes, from the United States.
So most of the good engineers went
to automotives or motorcycles.
That's why the motorcycle
engineering is very good in Japan,
because a motorcycle
is next to an airplane,
much more
similar dynamics.
So, looks like
a simple vehicle,
but, actually, it's pretty much
complicated in the 3D moving,
more than
the four-wheeled cars.
A motorcycle at this
level is basically flying on the ground.
So, a motorcycle comes along,
pitches into a corner,
it gets to 60 degrees.
There's two gravities
going down through the tire.
That's exactly the same
as of any aircraft
which goes into a corner.
There's two gravities
trying to pull the wings off.
The physics of doing 140 miles
an hour with your knee on the ground,
everything's trying to suck
itself into the ground.
This weight should make the
bike fall into the corner.
But, because of the speed
and other forces,
force that's centrifugal,
that makes these two
forces in equilibrium.
That's why the bike can lean
and don't fall into the curve.
When you run
around the corner,
the force wants to
throw you to the outside,
so you counteract it
by leaning to the inside.
Same with a motorcycle.
Everyone who's ridden a
bicycle has that experience.
It's not that
far away, really.
They just go
a hell of a lot faster.
When it's on its side,
the entire bike must
flex to absorb the bumps,
because the suspension cannot move
up and down when it's horizontal.
The chassis has to be flexible.
It's a controlled flex.
To quote one of the Honda
Japanese, "it bends like a tree.
"It bends and returns
to its position."
On Sundays,
they are gladiators.
But on Fridays and Saturdays,
during practice and qualifying,
the riders and their teams are
more like research scientists.
Their subject?
Bending the laws of physics
as far as possible.
Every track
has its own attitude
of what the bike
needs to be set at.
The tarmac surface,
cambers, off-cambers,
maybe some uphills,
downhills,
tighter corners, slower
corners, faster corners.
If you can get a bike
that works 85%, 90%, that's good.
It's never going
to be perfect,
because you have so many different
types of corners on a track.
You're going to go through
a corner and be like,
"Okay, it's awesome
through there."
You get to a hairpin and
you're like, "It's a wreck. "
You gotta at least try to keep the
traction just a little bit longer
till we can start driving,
because I can't roll with that.
So, right in here,
it's still skatey
when you're going
to the throttle,
then it transfers,
then it grips.
Yeah.
All I try
and do is make him
as comfortable as
he can be on the bike.
Once he's comfortable,
then he can go do his job.
It's doing everything
okay, but...
It always feels like
there's a little something
here you could make better.
You could make this better, get
a little more feel out of that,
have a little more
traction here.
There could always be something
a little bit better.
A MotoGP bike
is so finicky.
It sounds stupid,
but one mil here,
one mil there,
which is nothing,
you go out and you come in
and go, "I can't ride it. "
I mean, it's crazy.
I don't like.
Every rider
wants the same thing.
The ability to feel
the track through the bike,
to sense exactly
what's happening
where the tires
touch the asphalt.
With feel comes confidence,
with confidence comes speed.
You ask anybody,
"Do you want more front end feel
or do you want more horsepower?"
Everybody's always gonna say,
"More front end feel. "
Once you get a
comfortable front end,
you start carrying more speed,
a little more entry speed,
and then your lap
times start dropping.
What matters here is that the
tire contact patch is so small,
and you've got to put 220
horsepower through that.
So, it's a game of not
over-stressing those tires,
but taking them to the limit
of their ability to grip.
But never too far.
And it's that little bit,
that last little bit,
that all these teams are
searching for to make them work.
Suspension is working,
but the tire is not working,
so we need to push on tire,
try to get tire working.
Before riding, tire warmers
heat the tires to 80 degrees Celsius.
Out on the track, the riders
have to work them hard
to generate additional heat and
the grip that comes with it.
It is regular to go over
You can't touch them when they
come in, put it that way.
It's like touching a metal
kettle in your kitchen.
And that's where that
amazing grip comes from.
By the time you get them
up to that temperature,
they become so sticky,
it's almost like glue.
The bikes are infinitely adjustable.
The laptops tell the story.
They may burn fossil fuel,
but these are effectively
digital machines,
their performance
pre-programmable.
There's so much technology
nowadays with anti-wheelie,
anti-spin,
anti-rectum control.
I mean, they got all kinds
of shit on this thing that...
You're constantly trying to
tweak this, play with that.
This line is the gearbox.
You see second, third,
fourth, fifth and sixth.
You see, the throttle
opening is the blue line.
Then we have a lot of sensors
checking the engine performance,
like lambda sensor,
temperature.
The total number, including
the mathematical channel,
is around 200,
but normally we check 20.
The KISS Principle.
Keep it simple, stupid.
Okay, so we go
with the first bike.
Yes.
Parallel up.
Yeah.
And the second bike,
bring that home.
Working
with him is amazing.
If you work with him, you can
realize how amazing he is.
Sometimes,
Valentino can make a race
with the same lap time
from beginning to the end.
I can take the lap number four
and I overlay lap number 25.
You can't see any difference in
speed between the lap number four
and the lap number 25.
Rossi
he has that edge-
He can feel very well,
this line.
He's going on that edge for all
the race, so he's good at that.
Mantequilla is the new
word, of this year, of my team.
When you ride
very smooth on the turns,
when you ride
like Mantequilla,
like you are putting
butter on bread,
with the knife, very
smooth, very precise.
This is the
Mantequilla style.
My dad, he was a mechanic. He was
in the garage with a hammer.
So I was thinking, "When
I became a real rider,
"I want to be at the same constant
as a hammer, with the same force,
"and in the same time."
Hammer, hammer,
every lap the same.
This is more or less
the two best skills I have.
The smooth style and the
hammer constant pace.
The other riders are more
inconstant, apart from Valentino,
who is, more or less,
the same constant as me.
It's one
of the best points about Jorge
that he's not
a big technician,
but he knows exactly what
he needs to be fast.
He says, "If you fix the braking,
I will be three times faster. "
Always, if we are able to do
it, he is three times faster.
Lorenzo, this year, he's
made everything look so easy.
He looks like he could
take a hand off
and put it behind his back
and do the same thing.
Sometimes I can feel a little
bit of frustration from Valentino.
He's developing
the machine,
and in the meantime,
he is preparing the tool
for his best rival
to try to beat him.
We have the bike that we have
worked very hard on for seven years
to make as good as it is.
Jorge has come along and
inherited a lot of that work
and has done
a great job with it.
It's not my bike because
Vale has been doing the evolution,
so he has been making
the bike for his style.
But I adapt
my style to the bike.
Every time I beat Valentino,
some part of the press says,
"Why do Ramon and you make
"better settings than
Vale and Burgess?"
And I say,
"Maybe it's not
a question of the setting."
He learned a lot
from Valentino.
He's learned too much
from Valentino.
Valentino has
developed the bike,
and he's got
the bike ready made.
What bothers
Rossi's fans is not just
the fact that Lorenzo's
winning races,
but that he's mimicking
Rossi's style.
Rossi has the sun and moon
on his helmet and leathers,
Lorenzo, a halo
and devil's horns.
One leg of Rossi's
leathers is yellow,
one leg of Lorenzo's, red.
He's a copycat.
We don't like him
so much here in Tavullia.
How much of that
is getting up Rossi's nose?
Maybe the imitation is part of
Lorenzo's way of winding Rossi up.
Valentino, nine wins here at
Mugello, seven in the MotoGP last week.
You think of Mugello, you
think of Valentino Rossi,
but it will be tough on
Sunday for many reasons,
for Jorge,
in particular.
Unfortunately, I had a bad
idea to crash with a motocross bike,
to have an injury that
may give me some problem,
but championship is long,
we need to fight.
I noticed that Valentino
was very anxious at this time.
It was a difficult moment of
the season because of my shoulder injury.
I need victory in Mugello.
He had a lot of
pain to the shoulder,
and coming to Mugello,
he said,
"I am like a gambler,
I want to play the joker."
We think of the joker
because it's like when you play cards
and you have the joker, at one
moment, you have to play.
And you have to play
when it's important.
He'd come out on a new
tire, he'd done one out lap.
Then he was on his second lap
and that's when you slow down.
But he hadn't done
a complete flying lap,
so the tire
temperature was already
at the bottom end
of its working range.
I slowed down because
I had Barber following me-
I slowed him down
for six or seven seconds.
And when I started to push,
the tire on the left was cold
and it was a big
high side, very fast.
That was
just in front of me.
So in the practice, I saw it
out of the corner of my eye.
It was ugly because
that's a really fast place.
It was a bad feeling because
I lose practice, I made a mistake.
But after, when I touched
the ground, I had pain.
I said, "Maybe the
problem is bigger."
The violent impact
of the foot
on the asphalt
broke the leg.
And the broken bone pierced
the skin and became exposed.
When I understood that I
broke a leg, I was quite desperate.
The pain was hard.
A cold tire crash
is usually the worst,
because you just
have no idea.
It's like you walked
through the front door,
and somebody
had a baseball bat
and just smacked you in the face
without you knowing about it.
I stabilized the injury and put
the bones back in the body.
It's not good for the bone
to be exposed to the air.
Together with
Dr. Macchiagodena at Mugello,
we arranged to get him
to the operating theater
in less than three hours,
avoiding vascular complications.
The day after,
me and Davide,
we went to the hospital to
check Valentino's condition.
We stayed there a couple of hours.
I was quite worried about him.
Valentino will not depart
bike racing second in anything.
Valentino Rossi does not leave
this paddock on a stretcher.
However many points he was behind
his teammate, of all people?
Doesn't happen.
Won't happen.
Even if he just comes back and
wins one race to prove a point,
that'll do it.
Why did Rossi crash?
It was an unforced error,
pressure maybe, probably.
He's not used
to being pushed.
And that's going to
get worse and worse.
It takes a normal person five
or six months if all goes well.
Yes, five months
is to play football.
The surgery was perfect,
Dr. Buzzi did a great job
and put a long pin
in the tibia.
The guy who was clever on the Sunday
morning at Mugello was Pedrosa,
because he woke up
and he went,
"I can win this.
I can step into the shoes
"of the man who has dominated so
many years here at Mugello. "
He will win
the Italian Grand Prix.
In the absence of
Valentino Rossi,
it's not Lorenzo, but it's Dani
Pedrosa who wins at Mugello.
What a ride.
Where did that come from?
Lorenzo might not have
woken up so quickly,
and he's now coming to the next
race here at Silverstone, going,
"Right, I've got to be on it
and I've got to be on it now. "
One week after the
crash, you don't think of nothing.
You don't think
of the race and the bike.
You just have pain,
you don't sleep,
and you say "Fuck!"
every time.
I'll return fast!
It's gonna be
Lorenzo who's going to win.
He comes through
Woodcote Corner.
Lorenzo wins
the British Grand Prix.
So, Jorge Lorenzo safely negotiates
the chicane here at Assen
and wins his fourth
Grand Prix of the season.
Jorge Lorenzo takes his third
victory in succession in MotoGP.
Dani Pedrosa takes second
and Casey Stoner falls to third.
I have a strange effect.
I don't have any emotion
to see the race on television.
It's like something
very far for me.
I don't expect this. I thought
when I saw the race, I'd say...
But I was very quiet.
Just thinking of the best way to
recover in a shorter time to be back.
He's using the hyperbaric
chamber, physiotherapy machines
to improve the healing
of the bone.
When you cannot ride the bike,
you are very quiet at home on the sofa.
But when you say,
"Maybe it's possible, "
you can't stay at home,
you have to try.
He was like a child,
when you give a present, a gift
to a child at Christmas time,
he's the same, his face
changed immediately.
Valentino, even after 104
wins, after nine titles,
he really can't wait
to ride a motorcycle.
Thirty-seven days after the crash,
Rossi tests a Yamaha
superbike at Brno,
the day after the World
Superbike races there.
A superbike is a highly
modified production machine,
a step down from
a MotoGP prototype,
but still a serious
He lapped with the same pace
as the previous day's winners.
But if you ask him, he'll say, "Did
you think I wasn't able to do it?"
I mean,
that's his answer.
And now it's a lot
better already than Misano.
Five days after, we worked a lot in
the gym and in the swimming pool
to improve power
and mobility.
I have pain, for sure.
I have some problem
after the six, seven laps.
So it will be difficult to do the
long race distances for sure.
When I saw him crash at
Mugello, I seriously thought,
"Well, that's
the end of him. "
Any man who has
achieved as much as he,
who is richer than
you could imagine
and is now under threat
from younger rivals,
lying there looking at his
shinbone sticking out of his leg.
Not a pretty sight.
I really thought that we'd
probably seen the last of him.
And then he made me
look like an absolute idiot
by coming back
within five weeks.
He's actually nuts about
racing, he's mad about racing.
There's no other
word to describe it.
The doctor,
they were all surprised,
his bone condition
after just 40 days
was like a normal person
in double the time.
The shoulder
was very painful.
Five or six hours in the
swimming pool and the gym.
A lot of people
helped me very much.
Every day
is a small victory.
It's his heart,
his passion,
his desire to escape
the monotony of everyday,
to return to the fatal
attraction
of the marvelous world
of motorcycle racing.
This is the kind of thing that
can turn on you as you get older.
It's really hard
to stop racing.
You look at the great names
from the recent past,
very few of them have retired
because they thought,
"I'm getting a bit old now,
and it's a bit silly
"and I've done everything
. There's nothing more to prove."
Very, very few. Agostini's
one very rare example.
Valentino managed to
reconcile me to motorcycles,
because Graziano had a
very big accident in 1982.
Little by little, Valentino
has revived in me
a great love
for motorcycles.
Now that Valentino has hurt
himself, I'm a little worried.
Rainey, Schwantz,
Doohan and so on,
they stopped
because they got hurt.
They were nuts about racing.
It's a fine kind of madness,
quite a potentially self-destructive
kind of madness, too.
Well, his dad was a famous
nutcase who was mad about racing
and got stopped
by getting hurt.
Let's hope it doesn't
run in the family.
I stopped for a big,
terrible crash.
I crashed in
Imola in 1982,
260 kilometers
perhou
Was not a good
experience.
Dr. Costa said
that I'd probably die,
and then this was not true, and
I have been very, very lucky.
He was dead.
Graziano Rossi
died in that corner.
Because that corner
was very dangerous,
I had stationed
a very good doctor there
and he reached him within
seconds and resuscitated him.
In this world, the rider smiles when he
confronts a fatal incident or drama.
That is the beautiful thing,
because life has meaning only
when it stares death in the face.
That throng of
journalists is all outside
the Fiat/Yamaha
garage. Number 46,
and amazingly, six weeks
later, he's even able to walk,
let alone ride
a 240 horsepower motorcycle.
Valentino wasting no time at all
to put three fastest splits in.
Valentino Rossi top of
the pile by 0-57 of a second-
Situation
completely normal.
I wondered about the psychology
here, whether Rossi can pressure him
somehow by coming
back this soon,
or whether Lorenzo is just going
to manage to just shut him out.
Remember in 2006,
when Valentino Rossi was
aboard the yellow Camel Yamaha
and he had disasters
with engines in Le Mans,
and he had an engine
blow up at Laguna,
but by the time we got to the
end of the year in Valencia,
he was leading the
championship by eight points
ahead of Nicky Hayden.
Lorenzo leads Rossi by 104
points, more than four race wins.
But this is a sport that sees sudden
and brutal reversals of fortune.
Who knows?
Maybe Lorenzo will run into the
kind of luck Rossi had in 2006.
Maybe Rossi still has
a shot at the title.
It's something very,
very difficult,
but it's something that everybody in
the back of his mind is thinking.
I feel
this bike very well.
I know the limits.
Of course I can crash,
but I know
the limits very well.
In the end, Rossi is back
because he can be and so he has to be.
This is what he lives for. This
is what they all live for.
One of the big
sensations is driving a bike fast.
I think, second,
only two other things.
Sex and riding,
the best experiences.
When you feel the bike
and you are confident with it,
it's fantastic.
Fantastic sensation.
It's some kind of love.
A strange love, you know.
Nothing's
even come close to it.
My whole life's pretty much just
revolved around motorcycles.
I love my bike. I love
the feeling of being on a bike.
Trying to improve
your riding style.
Racing these machines
against these people,
that's what I love.
You zip up the leathers,
put the helmet on,
walking out to your bike,
you feel complete.
As soon as that shield
goes down, there's nothing.
That's it. It's just done.
You snap the shield shut.
Let's go as fast
as we possibly can.
Been racing motorcycles for
It's been a very
long love affair.
I started riding bikes
when I was four years old.
This is my
twenty-first season.
When I am home more than one week,
I want to come back and ride.
From the time I was three
years old, been racing motorcycles.
I didn't ever want to be
an astronaut, a fire fighter,
a footballer, nothing else.
I wanted to be world champion.
When I was four, I was sitting
on Santa Claus' lap and said,
"I want a motorcycle. "
And then his reaction was,
"Well, you can't do this."
And I totally just walked off
and didn't even listen
to what he had to say,
'cause he didn't have
a motorcycle for me.
And then I got a motorcycle
when I was five.
And started racing street
bikes when I was eight.
I was three years old the first
time I got onto a bike, I realized that
it was my sport.
My dad was convinced
I could be a world champion.
Since the beginning,
since I was three years old.
He was talking
about that with people
and people thought
that he was mad,
completely mad.
It's usually the father
who supports his son's ambition.
But there's always
the exception.
Well, my mom was the one that
had the $80,000 credit card bills,
working three jobs,
doing that kind of stuff.
We knew when
he was three years old.
When he was 12, I knew he
was going to be a champion.
Told so many people.
So far this year,
Mary Spies has watched her son
crash twice in France,
retire in Spain
and finish seventh in Italy.
Ben said it's gonna
be a different ball game.
And just hang in there and
we'll take it step by step-
He crashed again
in practice in Britain.
And then racing with
a broken bone in his foot,
he shows everyone
what he's made of.
Inside line
as they go down towards Abbey.
Ben Spies now
on the outside.
Can he find some way
through at Farm Curve?
There you see, and Spies
is gonna go through.
How much longer?
Halfa lap.
Dovizioso's second.
Ben Spies in third place.
Got it.
He got third.
Bravo!
That's his life, and
he can do whatever he wants
and I will support him.
The other man on fire
at this point of the season
is Frenchman
Randy de Puniet,
who has qualified on the front
row at the last three races,
second only
to Lorenzo and Stoner.
Like Spies, de Puniet
is in the satellite team,
racing a second-best bike.
Only the top teams get
the latest equipment,
an unfair fact
of MotoGP life.
De Puniet's ultra-fast qualifying
laps are a tribute to his bra very.
And perhaps also to the
testosterone boosting powers
of his Australian girlfriend,
Lauren Vickers.
But it's very, very hard
to maintain that level
of over-the-limit commitment
for an entire race.
I don't like to see that
so much, the crashes,
but when he's on a high, it's really
amazing to be able to watch him.
Yeah, I feel okay because
it's my riding style.
And it was the only
chance to be fast.
Sure, my bike was a little
bit difficult to control.
But it was no problem because I
am in good physical condition,
and I was ready for that.
It's another
good lap by Rossi.
Will it lift him out of fifth place?
It does. Up to fourth.
He's getting nearer and nearer
to that front row start.
Fire out of the side
of Jorge Lorenzo's bike.
Fuel off the left
hand side of the bike.
Oil spitting out
of the bike.
Pouring out.
There he is. Oil spurting
out of his bike.
All the way down
towards Turn 1.
Ben Spies has gone down.
Hey, there's someone
else there as well.
Is that
Randy de Puniet?
Yeah.
It's de Puniet down.
Red flag out.
Oil on the track,
de Puniet looks hurt.
Jorge Lorenzo is confirmed
as being on pole position.
The Spaniard just nipping
ahead of Casey Stoner.
And Dani Pedrosa
rounding out the first row.
Row two, Dovizioso backing
up Pedrosa's speed.
Valentino Ross:
he returns-
Row three, headed
by Randy de Puniet.
Let's hope he's okay for tomorrow's
Grand Prix after the crash.
Jorge Lorenzo in pole.
Casey Stoner, he goes
to Honda next season.
Behind them, look out for the return
of The Doctor, Valentino Rossi.
Valentino Rossi hasn't ruled out
challenging for this championship.
Round eight of the
MotoGP World Championship
here at the Sachsenring
is underway.
The race is scheduled for
Sachsenring is unusual
because it has 10 left
and only three right turns.
The layout helps Rossi.
His injuries are to his right
leg and right shoulder,
and the track places the load on the
stronger left side of his body.
Nine laps in, Lorenzo leads from
Pedrosa, Stoner and Dovizioso.
Rossi is in fifth place
when the crash happens.
De Puniet falls first and is struck
by the Ducati of Mika Kallio.
Bautista and Espargaro
hit de Puniet's bike.
De Puniet's injuries,
a broken tibia and fibula,
like Rossi at Mugello.
The race is restarted.
Pedrosa takes the lead
from Lorenzo in lap 10
and edges away to win
by three seconds.
The real battle
is behind them.
Casey Stoner and Valentino
Rossi fight it out
for the final place
on the podium.
And it will all
be down to the final lap
for the battle
for the podium position.
Rossi will be
desperate for it.
Stoner desperate
to hang onto it.
Look how wide
Stoner has gone.
He's gonna try and get the
drive going down to 14.
Stoner's going to come in. It's
the final corner in attack.
Stoner goes through
into 14.
Across the line,
it's Stoner.
You know, I'm sure
from Casey's perspective,
there was extra
effort put in
to not get beaten by a guy
with a broken leg.
Overall, I think being
a left-hand track
may not be too difficult
on the leg.
You obviously don't get any
rest at all at Laguna.
I suffered quite
a lot in Turn 4 and Turn 5,
for changing direction
from right to left
and also braking
for the turnpike.
It's a hard
sport, physically.
You are getting
tired in the race.
You are moving your body and have
a lot of force to move this bike.
And also to go down at
the Corkscrew, I have some pain.
So in that change of direction,
I was not strong enough.
In the race,
Pedrosa leads Lorenzo again.
But this time,
he cracks under pressure.
Crash! Dani Pedrosa!
Dani Pedrosa has crashed out,
leading all the way
in this race so far.
Rossi finds himself in a
last-lap battle with Andrea Dovizioso.
This time, he wins.
He's back on the podium.
But his teammate
is on the top step.
He has a serenity.
Very mature, measured, careful
races he's had all this year,
with or without
Rossi there.
He did a great job,
so great congratulations to him,
and he's in front every practice
and in every condition.
So he's in great,
great shape.
I think he deserves the championship,
without my injury, my crash.
You cannot say nothing
to a rider that...
The worst result
is second, so...
In 2009, Valentino Rossi
said he expected to stay at Yamaha
until the end
of his career.
At Laguna Seca, it's announced that
he will race for Ducati in 2011.
One year ago, I think
that I finish my career with Yamaha.
But after, inside of Yamaha,
a lot of things changed.
Yamaha have hired somebody
who is not just as fast as him,
but frequently
faster than him,
and more distressingly for
Rossi, a great deal younger.
I think we've got
to wait till 2016
before we can make
a determination on that,
because that's when he'd have had
the opportunity to win as many
MotoGP Championships
as Valentino has.
At the next race
in the Czech Republic,
Rossi is on course for a
front row starting position
when he crashes in the final
corner of his fastest lap.
He escapes without injury.
He finishes fifth
in the race.
Lorenzo wins.
Two weeks later in sweltering
heat in Indianapolis,
Rossi crashes again
in practice.
And again.
And again.
When he came back, we thought
that maybe in two or three races,
he would have been 100%.
Now we realize that
it's not like that.
In a normal condition,
you fully dominate your bike,
like you are in control.
Probably now, he is not in control.
He has a lack of power.
After a disappointing
sixth at Laguna Seca,
Ben Spies rises to the occasion on
his return to his home country.
He qualifies on pole and
takes second in the race.
It was a perfect weekend for me.
We didn't win the race,
but in a rookie season,
satellite bike,
you can't ask for
a whole lot more.
Dani Pedrosa wins,
Lorenzo is third, Rossi fourth.
You can't bet
against Valentino.
You know,
Valentino is Valentino.
But there is always
a changing of the guard.
Valentino
said it best himself.
"The young sharks smell
blood, " and they did.
And that aura of invincibility
of Valentino's has been broken.
Now, can he repair that?
Rossi wears a special
helmet for his home race in Misano,
telling himself to wake up
as the hour approaches.
I feel better
with my leg,
but unfortunately, this racetrack
is very demanding for the shoulder,
because it has three
hard braking on the right.
The whole structure of
the shoulder was damaged,
the socket, ligaments,
muscles, cartilage.
I think there's
a particular angle it's fine,
and another angle,
it's very weak.
Braking.
At the end of the straight,
under hard braking.
The maximum G-force
you can have is 2.5G.
The word is that his team
is trying to make the bike
easier for him to ride.
At the end of the day,
if you can make
the bike easier to ride,
why wouldn't you make it easier
to ride for a fit person?
It's impossible. It's impossible
to make the bike easy to ride.
If he had lots of strength, we
could make the bike good for braking,
which is a strength of his.
But when he became tired
or weak with his shoulder,
then we had to slightly move
the setting away from braking
and more towards
sort of help it turn.
We try to make a bike
easier to stop from braking,
but, you know, when you have
a good bike in braking,
then you have a bike
that doesn't turn well,
you create some benefit, but you
create a lot of negative also.
This problem has been the
story of all this year.
Valentino Rossi heads
the second row of the grid.
He is the reigning
MotoGP World Champion.
And the time is
coming up to 2:00.
It's time,
Valentino, to wake up.
And for those Valentino
Rossi fan club members,
it's time for Valentino Rossi
to win another Grand Prix.
The last time that Valentino
Rossi won a Grand Prix
was April 11th,
it's now September 5th.
What is going on?
In front of his adoring
fans, Rossi does the best he can,
fighting off Casey Stoner
and Andrea Dovizioso
for third place behind Jorge Lorenzo
and race winner Dani Pedrosa,
who is now the only man with a hope
of challenging Lorenzo for the title.
Valentino is like the conductor of an
orchestra, coordinating the rhythm,
the sound and the movement
of the motorcycle.
He has always been beautiful to
watch on a motorcycle, but now
with the shoulder injury,
his style is not so flowing.
In Aragon, at the
Casey Stoner wins for the
first time this year.
And for the first
time this year,
Jorge Lorenzo fails
to get on the podium.
He finishes fourth,
behind Nicky Hayden.
Dani Pedrosa is second,
narrowing the gap to Lorenzo to
125 points
still up for grabs.
Aragon is Valentino Rossi's
worst finish this year.
Sixth.
My throttle kept open
when I was going to brake.
So I was braking, trying to
brake, but with the throttle off,
my bike was full open
and I crashed.
We had a technical
problem on the bike.
And he couldn't control it
and he crashed so bad,
because I think he didn't
expect at that moment anything,
and he fell really hard
on his left shoulder
and he broke
the collarbone.
It seems to have been an
assembly fault, a mechanic's error,
and it cost him
everything.
In the last five years,
he's always been the runner-up,
or second or third.
Finally, to be the champion,
everything has to be
there for you that time.
And it hasn't been
there for him.
We can only keep trying,
and looking for it
and believing in
it the way we do.
Because if you don't believe,
there's no meaning to do nothing.
My dream is to become,
one day, MotoGP World Champion,
at least one title
in MotoGP.
That would
make me very happy.
If not, maybe it's because
I wasn't good enough,
but I know I'm putting
everything here
to make it happen.
The moment that
Dani Pedrosa hit the ground,
the 2010 MotoGP World
Championship was over.
His collarbone is
not simply broken,
it's shattered
into several pieces.
He's flown back
to Spain for surgery.
Officially, Jorge Lorenzo
needs another 19 points
to put the title beyond
Dani Pedrosa's reach.
But Pedrosa will
not be fit enough
to win any more
races this year.
Lorenzo can clinch the world title if
he finishes first or second in Japan.
He'll have to get past
his teammate to do this.
That was very brave,
wasn't it, from Lorenzo,
round the outside
of Valentino Ross:
And Lorenzo trying to find the
inside of Valentino Rossi.
He's got it.
Can Rossi retake him?
And he's gonna
love doing that.
Back through at Turn 5.
We still have to see Lorenzo
under pressure, with the injury of Vale,
by the half of season,
he had quite a big gap
in the championship.
Here comes Lorenzo,
he almost does take
Rossi's leg off now.
Can Rossi react again?
Going down towards Turn 5.
They're side by side in the tunnel
and Rossi returned the favor.
Can Lorenzo stick it around
the outside of him,
in towards the S-curve,
he's gonna try it.
On the inside now,
very hard stuff.
Eight turns going around
there, Rossi on the inside...
Valentino still
has this aura about him
if it comes down
to a last-lap fight,
that he is not beaten
and will not be beaten.
Now, can he go around
the outside another time?
He loves that maneuver.
Here he comes once more,
in towards the S-curve,
and this time he will
go in front once more.
Can Rossi react
to the left hand...
He's gonna try...
It's the block pass, isn't
it, from Valentino Ross:
Valentino beat him up
good and proper, totally fairly.
Good close racing, but it
was no mercy to a teammate
who's getting close
to a world championship.
Rossi has held him off
for the final podium position,
but delight
for Ducati and Stoner,
he wins the
Japanese Grand Prix!
Brilliant performance!
Second place,
Andrea Dovizioso.
In third place is
Valentino Ross:
Jorge Lorenzo
must wait another week
before he can get his hands
on Rossi's crown.
He's where he should be.
He's in pole position,
his sixth pole
of the season,
eight Grand Prix wins
before the start of the most
important race of his life.
The Grand Prix of Malaysia,
Lorenzo leads the way.
I remember
when I was 16,
I was so ingenuous
about everything,
I didn't get any result,
and this world of the
motorcycle, for me, was so big,
and I was so small.
So I had a lot of pressure
to make good race.
I crashed many times,
making some mistakes,
but, you know, fortunately,
you get better.
Jorge Lorenzo will be
crowned the 2010 World Champion.
He finishes third
in the race. He's done it.
Twenty years after
he first rode a motorcycle,
just as his father predicted,
Jorge Lorenzo is
MotoGP World Champion.
That day in Malaysia, at the
same time, in the same place,
there is another race.
Between 2004 and 2010,
Valentino Rossi has won
When I arrive at 45,
I say, "I have to do 46. "
It's Lorenzo
around the outside.
Look out for Casey
Stoner on the inside,
and Ben Spies as well.
Stoner up into third, but
where is Valentino Rossi?
He's way, way back.
He's right down
the order.
Absolute disaster
for Valentino Ross:
He's not in the top 10.
We seem to have lost Casey Stoner.
Where's he gone?
In that final corner,
Stoner's gone down.
Stoner out of the race.
He's won the last two races,
he's not gonna win this one.
Where is Valentino Rossi?
Up into eighth position now,
ahead of Loris Capirossi.
There's Rossi,
come from a long way back,
try and fight through on the
inside of Colin Edwards.
He really, really means
business this afternoon.
He wants the battle,
doesn't he?
And there's the man who
will be taking his seat
at the Fiat Yamaha
team next year, Ben Spies.
And no way for Spies
to fightback.
On board now with
Valentino Rossi,
the fastest rider on the
circuit at the moment.
He desperately wanted
the 46th win on a Yamaha.
He was in bad shape,
but he fought for it.
Pulls up into fourth
now, past Nicky Hayden.
Marco Simoncelli
having a great race.
He's thrown
Hayden as well.
Valentino Rossi closing
right up now on Marco Simoncelli.
Rossi comes so, so late,
taken third place.
Into Turn 1, Andrea Dovizioso
takes over the lead in the race
and runs Lorenzo
slightly wide.
Rossi is just under 02:02:01,
almost half a second quicker.
Rossi on the inside,
how much distance between those
two bikes as Rossi comes through.
Lorenzo runs in a little
bit wide at Turn 1.
Here comes Rossi
down into Turn 9.
Dovizioso running
very wide there.
Here comes Dovizioso,
down into Turn 1.
And Dovizioso takes over
at the front once more,
and Rossi fighting back.
Here comes Rossi on the
inside, he's done it again.
He's back in front.
It's something incredible,
that after seven seasons,
I do exactly 46 victories
with Yamaha.
It's something maybe written
in the destiny, you know?
Valentino Rossi wins
the Malaysian Grand Prix.
After all the broken leg,
the shoulder injuries,
Rossi is back.
It was great- Also I prefer to
win 47, 48 or 49, but not less than 46-
Valentino Rossi rounds off
the season with three podium finishes
and third place overall
in the championship.
He bids farewell to Yamaha in
a letter to his beloved bike.
Many things have changed since
that far-off time in 2004
when my M1 and I kissed for the
first time on the grass at Welkom,
when she looked straight in my
eyes and told me, "I love you!"
Rossi inherits Stoner's
volatile Ducati for 2011.
He has an operation
to repair his shoulder
after a first test,
where he was 15th fastest.
I have a bad
problem with the shoulder,
so I don't understand
the bike very well.
Now I make the surgery.
It's a question of getting
the fitness back into Valentino.
The development and the setting for
him will come more quickly then.
Valentino still has many
things to do in motorcycling.
Now, it's like
I am 10 years younger, no?
Because it's a new adventure
starting from the beginning.
It's a great emotion,
it's like we start from zero.
So, I hope to do this
for some other seasons.
How many more races? How
many more championships can he win?
Back in 1977,
Giacomo Agostini walked away
from Grand Prix racing
after 14 seasons,
unscathed and untouchable.
In 2012, as he chases
Agostini's record
of eight premier class
championships
and 122
Grand Prix victories,
Valentino Rossi will be entering
his 17th year in MotoGP.
But for every year that you push your
bike and your body to the limit,
you push your luck
to the limit as well.
You can't be
the fastest forever.
And when the red lights go
out, nobody's looking back.
The past is behind you.
And there's only
one question.
Who's fastest now?