MotoGP – The ogre of Tavullia devours his 100th success in Assen! – MotoGP: Rossi, the boss!

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The ogre of Tavullia devours its 100th success in Assen !

MotoGP - The ogre of Tavullia devours his 100th success in Assen! - MotoGP: Rossi, the boss!

At 30, Valentino Rossi seems to have retained the same motivation as when he started out in 1996: yesterday at the Grand Prix in Assen, the Italian genius took pole, the fastest lap in the race and above all his 100th victory, all categories combined…. Respect !

MotoGP: Rossi, the boss !

Under a sun which finally makes the weather forecast lie, the MotoGP riders take their respective places on the starting grid in front of a large crowd to witness the potential hundredth victory of Valentino Rossi !

Departure : Dani Pedrosa achieves a superb holeshot in front of Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner and Chris Vermeulen. Rossi tries to dislodge Pedrosa, but it is Stoner who interferes in the leading position, surprising the two pilots! The n ° 27 and the n ° 46 are wheel in wheels and the Yamaha rider takes advantage of a slight Stoner gap to take the lead. !

Dani Pedrosa is solid third ahead of Jorge Lorenzo who had to whip to compensate for a poor start. The four strong men of the championship are in the same tempo and stick a suitcase to Chris Vermeulen, Colin Edwards and Andrea Dovizioso.

Well started, Randy de Puniet makes a slight straight ahead and is in thirteenth position … Jorge Lorenzo overtakes Dani Pedrosa, aware that his teammate is trying to accelerate the pace in an attempt to protect himself from a rise in his rivals. Already seriously behind in the championship, Pedrosa loses the front end of his RCV212 in the first corner, while Lorenzo steals second position from Stoner: "the good news is that I didn’t hurt myself in the fall and given my recent injuries, it’s a relief", will console Dani Pedrosa after the race: not sure that the HRC has the same vision of the events !

More than three seconds behind the leading men, Andrea Dovizioso is the first Honda rider ahead of Colin Edwards and Chris Vermeulen in the middle of a fight. Pursuing his rider alone, Valentino Rossi easily contains the comeback of his rival Jorge Lorenzo: the Doctor even signs the track record and now has more than two seconds ahead of n ° 99 !

The two teammates seem well on course to engage in a duel from a distance that Casey Stoner does not seem able to arbitrate: the Australian is already almost two seconds behind a Lorenzo who is giving everything to try to keep up with his pace. leader ! Disaster for the HRC: after Pedrosa, it was Dovizioso‘s turn to go downside in the same turn as his teammate a few laps earlier !

Halfway through the race, the gaps widened and Valentino Rossi continued to lead the race in front of a tenacious Jorge Lorenzo, while Casey Stoner was definitely let go – far ahead – in front of Colin Edwards and Chris Vermeulen. Several lengths from the Suzuki rider – and thirty seconds from Rossi! – Mika Kallio fights tooth and nail with James Toseland, under the eyes of a compact group composed of Randy de Puniet, Nicky Hayden, Loris Capirossi, Toni Elias and Alex de Angelis.

Firmly installed at the head of this historic event, Valentino Rossi is heading towards his 100th Grand Prix success with all the aggressiveness of a multiple world champion: while the Italian has an already considerable lead over his fiery teammate, the Doctor. does not spare and continues to panic the clock to increase his advantage to 3.6 seconds with less than five laps to go !

Realizing the invulnerability of his illustrious teammate on this GP, Lorenzo nevertheless continues to whip to deprive Rossi of this much desired victory. Despite all his efforts, the gap grows mercilessly over the course of the race … Surprisingly dominated, Casey Stoner is more than four seconds behind the Iberian, far ahead of Edwards, Vermeulen and the group led by Toseland and Kallio.

With the strength of the wrist, Toni Elias climbs back to eighth position behind the English and the Finnish by taxing Randy de Puniet, Loris Capirossi and Nicky Hayden, victim of a slight straight.

Last round : Valentino Rossi ends his last lap with a considerable lead over Jorge Lorenzo and goes under the checkered flag in wheelie! Several seconds behind the leaders, Casey Stoner finished third ahead of Edwards and Vermeulen: although apparently less marked than in Barcelona, ​​the Australian would only make a furtive appearance on the podium, before directly joining the mobile clinic team to be cured of this mysterious illness that no longer seems to want to leave him…

The arrival of the next group is disputed: Mika Kallio gets down on the ground three curves from the end, while Elias pulls straight into the last chicane, leading a Capirossi who had asked for nothing! The questionable maneuver leaves the field open to James Toseland and Randy de Puniet and like Terol in 125, Toni Elias will be penalized with a twenty seconds penalty which will put him back from 8th to 12th place….

During his lap of honor, Rossi takes out a huge banner with a photo of each of his hundred successes hanging! Obviously, the Doctor must be helped by his fan club as the flag is long … to the great happiness of the Dutch public !

Happy as a rookie who has just won his first race, the n ° 46 is jubilant on the podium, because with this double, he is at the head of the championship ahead of Lorenzo, Stoner, Dovizioso and a Dani Pedrosa who sees his chances in the Championship: the Spanish are now 64 points behind Rossi…

They are explained:

Valentino Rossi (1st) : “It’s fantastic ! 100 wins is a great number! Thank you to everyone who helped me reach this number: my teams over the past ten years, Jeremy Burgess and especially all my close friends and family for motivating me. But we still hope to win more races! I had a good feeling during the race and I knew I was very fast in a couple of places on the track, so I tried to escape as early as possible and set my pace. It was a perfect race because any mistake would have cost a lot. I knew Lorenzo was very strong, so I tried to take the advantage".

Jorge Lorenzo (2nd) : "Valentino is the hero of the day: 100 wins is an impressive number that no driver, or only one or two, will achieve in the future. Maybe I’ll get there on a play-station !"

Casey Stoner (3rd) : (Absent from the post-GP press conference to seek treatment, the 2007 world champion spoke through a press release). “I was fine all week but felt tired again on Friday and it got worse over the weekend. I’ve taken all kinds of supplements and vitamins but nothing seems to have worked, so we’ll have to investigate this more closely because I can’t continue like this and it’s costing us points. Luckily I had a fantastic bike once again today and I owe it to the team. Also, a big thank you to Dr. Macchiagodena and our physiotherapist Freddie (Dente), who looked after me in Catalonia and here. Unfortunately we don’t have much time to get back on our feet for Laguna but we will do our best"

Randy de Puniet (7th) : "I must admit that it was a particularly exhausting and stressful race for me. The position on the grid did not make our job any easier and my start was not as efficient as on previous Grands Prix, but I managed to overtake several drivers after the first curve to finally complete the first lap on the ninth rank. I got on the right car afterwards with riders who had more power than my Honda and I really wasn’t in a position to try to overtake. When Toseland passed me on braking on the back straight he was really on the limit and hit me. So I had to work harder once more to catch up with the group, but Elias hit me on the third corner as well. Despite everything, I remained focused, and I certainly did not deprive myself of passing Capirossi and Elias when they made a small mistake at the start of the chicane on the last lap. Just like the qualifying session yesterday which was particularly delicate for us, we are therefore satisfied with this 7th place. And a big thank you also to my technical team who worked hard between the warm-up and the race to solve our electronic problems.".

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