Brivio assesses brilliant year so far for Rossi

Davide Brivio is under no illusions that Valentino Rossi has faced one of the toughest opponents of his career this year in Jorge Lorenzo and with Dani Pedrosa and Casey Stoner acting as further thorns in the illustrious Italian’s side every race weekend has been a big challenge.

Rossi is in a great position with four races remaining, but he has shown his fallibility with crashes at Le Mans and Indianapolis this season and Brivio believes the competition will be fierce again during the concluding phase of the championship – especially as Stoner is scheduled to return from sick leave in Portugal at the next round.

Summarising Rossi’s work thus far in 2009, Brivio said, “This season has been very hard, because it’s a tough fight at every race. We’re leading by 30 points at the moment after 13 races, so it’s been a positive season but very difficult as this year four riders really stand out from the rest. Valentino, who is a multiple World Champion, had to start again from scratch to fight against younger guys. We saw at Misano that he is able to come up on top, is very strong and is very motivated when he really wants to win.”

Asked to pick out his highlight for Rossi throughout the course of the season so far Brivio remarked, “Catalunya was a great moment, one of the biggest, it was the beginning of the big duel with Jorge Lorenzo. After that most races were really a tough battle. Catalunya was a great race and Valentino stood out with a great move on the final corner of the last lap. It was the most emotional win, but there were many other great moments.”

Previewing the rest of the season, he added, “Now we only have four races to go, so we’re getting near to the end of the season. It is going to be difficult because we have a 30 point gap which we need to maintain, so it will be a case of being clever. Trying to win whenever it’s possible, like in the last race at Misano, but also we’ll have to know when a second or third place is good enough.”