MotoGP Rd1: Rossi takes dramatic last gasp win
from Motorcycles (327 articles)
April 10, 2005 Valentino Rossi put the gloss on a perfect start to his defence of the MotoGP World Championship at the Spanish Grand Prix in Jerez today, smashing the lap record by over two seconds and gaining a significant psychological edge over his main rival for the championship, taking a victory on the last corner from a seemingly impossible position. Riding a completely new smaller, lighter and faster Yamaha M1 for the first time in race conditions, Rossi spent almost the entire race stalking Gibernau who led from within a few corners of the start. At first it was a lead group of four, with Honda’s Nicky Hayden and Marco Melandri who broke away from the field running at a pace that slowly dropped off first Melandri and finally Hayden could not maintain. For the final half of the race, the two main rivals fought out their expected duel in the Spanish sunshine before Gibernau’s vocal and supportive home crowd. At times it looked as if Gibernau had opened an unbridgable gap over Rossi, but just when the gap looked beyond Rossi, he would suddenly close Gibernau down and ride to within striking distance.
With two laps to go, the Italian pounced and immediately began to build a margin of his own, leading into the final lap with the distance to Gibernau getting bigger with each corner, before making an uncharacteristic mistake, getting in too deep under brakes and running wide.
Gibernau took the opportunity, slipping back into the lead with enough margin to maintain it on a circuit he knows as his own. Rossi somehow got his motorcycle back into proximity of the leading Honda rider and with one part luck (he was clearly not in control), part skill (it’s doubtful any other rider on the planet could have done it) and part dogged never-say-die determination, he slipped the M1 underneath Gibernau’s Honda just as the Spaniard tipped into the final corner.
The bikes touched, Gibernau’s trajectory changed from the final straight toward the sandtrap and Rossi bounced nicely off Gibernau and back into the right direction of the chequered flag. Gibernau fortunately kept it upright in the kitty-litter and ploughed through the safety trap to bring his bike home into second place, rubbing his shoulder and setting the scene for one of the most riveting victory lane encounters ever seen at a Grand Prix circuit.
With the Spanish crowd, never known for its sportsmanship when visiting sporting entitles venture onto Spanish soil to contest a Spaniard, calling loudly for Rossi to be disqualified, Rossi went about his business of celebrating, thanking his fans and ignoring Gibernau’s presence as if nothing had happened. Just as the greats of motorsport such as Doohan, Schumacher and the late Ayrton Senna had done before, Rossi knew he had won fair and square – though sometimes the authorities try to make a judgement on the fairness of such matters, in pure racing terms, he had done nothing wrong and as he later said at the press conference, “that’s racing.”
For Gibernau, it will be difficult to maintain the healthy mental attitude he brought into the season. He led all the practise and qualifying sessions for the entire weekend until the last few seconds of the final qualifying session on Saturday afternoon when Rossi astonished everyone with a single lap that was half a second faster than Gibernau, putting the champ back on pole position.
The many incidents of the last two seasons, the qualifying experience at Jerez and the race outcome are all beginning to look like they’ve been written by the same scriptwriter; build suspense, make it look like the challenger is about to prevail over the champion, then resolve in favour of the champion in yet another completely unexpected manner.
If it were a soap opera, the audience would know what to expect. It has now happened too often for any reasonable spectator to expect that Rossi will not prevail and that’s now the point that Gibernau must psychologically overcome – even he must becoming to believe that it’s just not possible to beat Rossi consistently enough to win a title. He won almost enough races last season, but it's looking like it will never be enough.
Anyone who was present at the post-race press conference could see that tensions were high, and that Gibernau was operating on automatic pilot, finding it difficult to know what to say or how to act. He had given everything and somehow his lead into the last corner had translated into second spot and a bruised shoulder and some unconvincing theatrics.
