MotoGP: Valentino Rossi Talks About Crash

Cycle News Staff | September 29, 2014

Photography by Gold & Goose
Valentino Rossi underwent a medical check with the Dr. Michele Zasa from the Clinica Mobile this morning and then answered questions for a team-generated interview. Here’s what Rossi had to say following his crash in yesterday’s Grand Prix of Aragon.

Valentino, how are you today?

“I’m fine, everything is okay, and this is the most important thing. I did not injure myself too much except for a big bump to the head. Last night I had a little headache, but today I’m fine, I’m 100 percent. It was a real shame because before the race we made a change that would have helped me a lot; the bike was strong, I was going well, I had recovered the gap in the first few laps and I was there with the leading riders. I felt good and I am sure I could have made a good race, so it was a real shame to fall. In a way I’m almost glad because even though we had a difficult weekend on Sunday we were competitive and this was supposed to be a track that is not very good for us.”      

Have you watched the race? What can you say about your crash and about your rivals’ race?

“Unfortunately, like [Andrea] Iannone I went onto the artificial grass. This is always very dangerous and especially in these cases because the track was still wet from the morning shower and there was nothing to be done. Marc [Marquez] and Dani [Pedrosa] tried to stay on track on the slick tires, but they took a big risk and in fact they crashed. In my case, if I had gone off track one meter before, I would have just gone wide, instead I touched the grass and I fell.”

We have a triple back-to-back races ahead of us in Asia and Australia. How do you see the coming races?

“Now there are three races in a row, three races that are all beautiful and I know all tracks very well. I like all of them a lot. I will try to do my best as we have done in the last races.”