Podium and rookie title brighten Fiat Yamaha´s day

On a day in which it had appeared that Fiat Yamaha might struggle, the team added two trophies to their cabinet courtesy of Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo. 2008 World Champion Rossi took his sixteenth podium of the year in Valencia, whilst Lorenzo collected the prize for Rookie of the Year with eighth.

Valentino Rossi - Third

`I don´t think that was so bad today! Unfortunately we had some problems yesterday and that meant we had to start from the fourth row, which left us with a very difficult task. As always though we found a way and my team gave me a good bike, which meant I was able to get a great start and then have some fun passing people. Once I got to third there was no way to catch Dani and so it wasn´t such an exciting race from then on. This has been an amazing season for us and to finish with another podium, the 16th, is great and we cannot complain. I am so happy with what we have done this year, as I said it´s definitely one of my greatest championships and I want to thank everyone once again – Yamaha, my team, the engineers, Bridgestone and everyone who helped us to get this result. Tomorrow we will try the new bike which means we can´t have as big a party as we would like, but it is important to try to find a base for it so I am looking forward to it.´

Jorge Lorenzo - Eighth

`I feel a bit disappointed with this result today because I really wanted to finish the season with a podium, but in the end we couldn´t manage it here. We had some problems though so I have to be happy that I was able to finish the race strongly, passing people and doing my best lap of the race on the last lap, especially when you consider that yesterday in qualifying I was the slowest on race tyres! The best thing about today is that I am the leading rookie, so I get a trophy all the same and this makes me very proud of my first season in MotoGP with Yamaha. I want to thank all of my team, engineers and everyone who has helped us. I also have to say a special thank you to Michelin for their work this season because this is our last race with them. I am very proud that I was able to win my first MotoGP race with them. Tomorrow we begin straight away to work on the 2009 bike and I am very excited to try it.´