Rossi philosophical about Brickyard mishap

A rare crash from Valentino Rossi in Sunday’s Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix gave his team-mate and young MotoGP rival Jorge Lorenzo hope in the title fight, but the masterful Italian was not too despondent about what had occurred at The Brickyard.

Following Dani Pedrosa’s fourth lap crash it looked as though Rossi and Lorenzo could be set for another classic battle as the World Champion attempted to repeat his 2008 Indianapolis success. However, a crash from out of nowhere when Rossi lost the front end on lap nine handed Lorenzo the victory and now the championship advantage is down to 25 points with five rounds remaining.

The first of those remaining races is at Misano next weekend, where Rossi also won last year en route to his sixth premier class title and where he is sure to enjoy huge support from the passionate home crowd.

Reflecting on race day at Indianapolis, Rossi stated, “Today is a disappointment of course. We struggled here with the setting all weekend but we made an improvement today and I got a good start and was able to stay in touch with Pedrosa. Once he fell, I knew it would be between Jorge and I, but I honestly don’t know how it would have finished, because Jorge was very fast today.”

He continued, “Obviously, it would have been better to have finished second than not to finish at all! Unfortunately I ran wide on to a dirty part of the track at turn one and lost the front. I tried to carry on but there was a problem with my throttle and it wasn’t possible. I want to congratulate Jorge for his victory and now we look forward to coming back to the front at Misano. We are still leading the championship and this is the most important thing.”