Valentino Rossi put in a great ride on Sunday evening from a diabolical 10th on the grid to reach 3rd, racking up his 222nd podium in all forms of GP racing. The veteran Italian overcome a tricky pre-season and build up to race day and now has a solid platform to build on.
Valentino began by thanking his team, saying how the support and trust helps to his performance. “My secret is my team, it’s Yamaha. We never give up and we always keep up our concentration. I always feel the support and the trust from all the guys around me, which is great.”
The 38-year-old nine time champion also said how he had already settled when he got to 5th place. ”We know our potential and we know we have a great bike and race rider. Sincerely, when I was in the top five I already said “this is OK”, but arriving on the podium is something even better.”
The Doctor continued, saying, “I’m very happy to start the season like this, because the podium is always better and like was said, it comes after a difficult period. We have to continue like this. This result is very good for us, both for our feeling and also for the technical side, because we now understand a lot of things.”
Rossi has two weeks off now to prepare for a track which he won at in 2015, with Termas De Rio Hondo coming up for the Argentine round of the championship. Rossi has scored the most points out of any rider on the grid in Argentina, with 58 accumulated over the past three season. Next up in joint 2nd is Marquez and Zarco, who have 50 (including Zarco’s 2 wins in Moto2).
Kiko Giles @MotoGPKiko