Valentino Rossi reached another milestone in his career today, joining an elite group of riders who have stood on the premier class podium 100 times today after riding his Fiat Yamaha M1 to second place in Jerez. The seven-time world champion formed part of a podium double for the Fiat Yamaha Team as his team-mate Jorge Lorenzo finished third, claiming his second consecutive podium in his rookie season.
Starting from fifth, Rossi did not get the best of starts and finished the first lap in sixth, but he soon settled into a good rhythm and was stalking Lorenzo, then in second, by lap three. On the next lap he passed his team-mate and set off after Dani Pedrosa, who had led from the start. The Spaniard was too quick today however and Rossi was unable to catch him, lapping comfortably in second until crossing the line at the end of the penultimate lap, when he mi stakenly thought the race had finished and slowed down as he crossed the line. He quickly realised his error however and luckily had enough of a cushion from Lorenzo to hang on to second, eventually finishing 2.883 seconds behind Pedrosa. Rossi moves into third place in the championship, whilst Lorenzo holds onto second and the Fiat Yamaha Team leads the team’s championship.
Valentino Rossi
Position: 2nd
Time: +2.883
“I’m really happy with this podium because, even though it hasn’t been so many races since the last one, it’s been quite a lot of months! I am also very happy to have reached 100 podiums in MotoGP; now I am wondering if I can get to 200! It’s a pity we couldn’t win today and maybe I was a little bit too cautious at the start because I wanted to take care of my tyres, but in the end they worked very well from start to finish and so this is great for the future. It’s always better to win but after the poor result in Qatar this is a very important second place to us, also because it’s my first podium with Bridgestone. Thanks to my team, to Yamaha and to Bridgestone because we’ve made a lot of progress this weekend, continuing right up to making some small but important adjustments after warm-up this morning. My bike and tyres are working very well, we’re third in the championship with a very long way to go and I’m feeling quite confident.”
Davide Brivio - Team Manager “We are very satisfied with today’s result, especially because this second place arrives after Qatar, where we learnt a lot. The Team, all the engineers and the technicians made a great job and used the information we got in Qatar in the best way to make a big step forward. Now we want to look at this race in Jerez as the start of our championship. Of course we still have a lot to learn about the Bridgestone/Yamaha combination, but I think both parties did an excellent job here and Valentino rode a great race and kept a very consistent rhythm. Tomorrow we will have one day of testing and we will do our best in order to be in good shape for Estoril. This is Valentino’s 100th podium and also the first one with Bridgestone, so it’s a special day, but we hope that there will be many others! Today I would really like to say “Bravi a tutti!”
Masahiko Nakajima - Team Director “Today I am very happy because we were able to get back onto the podium with Valentino! This year is not easy because we don’t have experience between the Bridgestone tyres and our M1, but after Qatar we investigated the problem with our set-up in order to make the tyres work better and improve our performance. This weekend we tested many solutions and finally we reached a very good set-up. As I said, I am very happy for Valentino because he can now fight again at his maximum level. In tomorrow’s test we will work again to fine tune the set-up of his M1 with the Bridgestone tyres; we now want Valentino back on the highest step of the podium!”
Ambient temperature: 19
Track temperature: 23
Humidity: 26
Results: 1. Dani Pedrosa (SPA) Repsol Honda 45'35.121
2. Valentino Rossi (ITA) Fiat Yamaha Team + 2.883
3. Jorge Lorenzo (SPA) Fiat Yamaha Team + 4.339
4. Nicky Hayden (USA) Repsol Honda + 10.142
5. Loris Capirossi (ITA) Rizla Suzuki MotoGP + 27.524
6. James Toseland (GBR) Tech 3 Yamaha + 27.808
7. John Hopkins (USA) Kawasaki Racing + 28.296
8. Andrea Dovizioso (ITA) JiR Team Scot MotoGP + 28.449
9. Shinya Nakano (JPN) San Carlo Honda Gresini + 32.569
10. Chris Vermeulen (AUS) Rizla Suzuki + 35.091
11. Casey Stoner (AUS) Ducati Marlboro + 42.223
12. Marco Melandri (ITA) Ducati Marlboro + 44.498
13. Anthony West (AUS) Kawasaki Racing + 45.807
14. Alex De Angelis (RSM) San Carlo Honda Gresini + 45.871
15. Toni Elias (SPA) Alice Team + 1'09.558
16. Sylvain Guintoli (FRA) Alice Team + 1'14.442
Not Classified: Colin Edwards (USA) Tech 3 Yamaha 22 Lap
Randy De Puniet (FRA) LCR Honda MotoGP 25 Lap
Championship Standings: 1. Dani Pedrosa (SPA) Repsol Honda 41
2. Jorge Lorenzo (SPA) Fiat Yamaha Team 36
3. Valentino Rossi (ITA) Fiat Yamaha Team 31
4. Casey Stoner (AUS) Ducati Marlboro 30
5. Andrea Dovizioso (ITA) JiR Team Scot MotoGP 21
6. James Toseland (GBR) Tech 3 Yamaha 20
7. Loris Capirossi (ITA) Rizla Suzuki MotoGP 19
8. Nicky Hayden (USA) Repsol Honda 19
9. John Hopkins (USA) Kawasaki Racing 13
10. Shinya Nakano (JPN) San Carlo Honda Gresini 10
11. Colin Edwards (USA) Tech 3 Yamaha 9
12. Marco Melandri (ITA) Ducati Marlboro 9
13. Randy De Puniet (FRA) LCR Honda MotoGP 7
14. Chris Vermeulen (AUS) Rizla Suzuki 6
15. Anthony West (AUS) Kawasaki Racing 3
16. Toni Elias (SPA) Alice Team 3
17. Alex De Angelis (RSM) San Carlo Honda Gresini 2
18. Sylvain Guintoli (FRA) Alice Team 1
Jerez Lap Record: V. Rossi (Yamaha) 2005, 1'40.596
Jerez Best Lap: L. Capirossi (Ducati) 2006, 1'39.064
