ITALY CELEBRATE IN GERMANY AGAIN AS ROSSI TAKES SENSATIONAL
WIN
 Just
seven days after Italy won the football World Cup with a dramatic
victory against France in Berlin, Camel Yamaha Team rider
Valentino Rossi produced an equally stunning performance to
seal another success for his country on German soil thanks
to a remarkable MotoGP win at the Sachsenring circuit near
Dresden. Starting from tenth place on the grid after struggling
to find the right set-up for his YZR-M1 machine in practice,
the odds were stacked heavily against Rossi as he aimed to
close the gap on series leader Nicky Hayden (Honda) with another
win. However, the reigning World Champion again confounded
all the predictions with his superb skill and dogged determination.
Already shifted up one place on the grid from his qualifying
position of eleventh after Casey Stoner (Honda) was ruled
out of the race through injury, Rossi continued to make his
way forward as soon as the red lights were out, passing four
riders by the end of the first lap to immediately get in contact
with the lead group. After carefully picking off Kenny Roberts
(Team KR) and Makoto Tamada (Honda), Rossi set about the lead
group of Hayden, Dani Pedrosa (Honda) and Marco Melandri (Honda)
and by lap 13 of 30 he was in front. The Italian held on to
a slim lead for all but one of the remaining laps, when Melandri
made one of his many attacks stick, and held off a barrage
of attacks from all three rivals in a dramatic final corner
to seal his fourth win of the season.
Whilst Rossi was able to rescue a dismal situation in practice,
unfortunately the same could not be said for his team-mate
Colin Edwards, who was unable to make any further progress
with his bike setting in the morning warm-up and struggled
to eleventh place.
 VALENTINO
ROSSI (1st; 41’49.248) “That was an unbelievable
race for me and my team. The first thing I have to say is
‘sorry’ to my M1 because last night was the first
time in our relationship that I ever doubted her! But she
was true to me once again and for this I owe a huge thank
you to Jeremy and all my mechanics and engineers. Last night
I didn’t think I could win this race but we made a change
in the morning warm-up and then again before the race in the
afternoon and today my M1 flew. In some parts of the track
it was very, very fast. We also did a great job together with
Michelin and at the start I realised that my rhythm was good
enough to battle for the win. Once I got to the front I knew
I was probably two or three tenths faster than the other guys
but it wasn’t enough to escape and I had to battle with
Dani, Nicky and Marco – each one was a great fight.
Marco was so strong at the end of the race and I have to give
my big congratulations to him, but thankfully I got the right
line in the last corner and was able to win. Italy became
World Champions in the football last weekend and I won today;
Germany is a good country for us!”
COLIN EDWARDS (11th; + 29.308) “What
can I say? I guess I’m just slow around here. The guys
worked their butts off all weekend trying to give me something
but we simply couldn’t get the bike working and I never
had the pace. It looked like Valentino was in the same situation
but today he pulled out something like his 700th miracle and
you can only take your hat off to a great champion. We changed
some things for the warm-up this morning but I wasn’t
comfortable so we went back to the setting from yesterday,
which we knew wasn’t ideal either. The first few laps
were okay but I struggled to pass Toni Elias and by the time
I got past him we were way back. From there on it was just
a battle to keep the bike on the track and there wasn’t
much more I could do but bring it home.”
DAVIDE BRIVIO – CAMEL YAMAHA TEAM DIRECTOR
“Valentino was unbelievable today, fantastic. This was
a very important victory for the championship because we’ve
collected a lot of points but more than that it is a big psychological
boost to win a fight in this way. This victory is a fruit
of the hard work from the engineers, the team and Valentino
– we have a great group of people here and they never
give up. We always try to win races and today Valentino made
it possible. Colin wasn’t able to recover a difficult
situation but now he has seven days before getting a big chance
to turn things around in his home Grand Prix.”
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