Valentino Rossi does not forget the shock of Marco Simoncelli’s death

Valentino Rossi was the protagonist of the’latest episode of the “PoretCast,” the podcast conceived and hosted by Giacomo Poretti “For me, in the ’90s, racing in the MotoGP was like entering a cartoon, it seemed something impossible.”

“The gags? After a success, the riders seemed to me a bit’dumped. I thought about doing something different. My favorite was the blow-up doll. Maybe because it was one of the first ones. I remember it displaced the fans. Most beautiful victory? Definitely Barcelona 2009, the one of overtaking Lorenzo at the last corner. A crazy adrenaline rush. I thought back to a similar attack on Stoner the year before, on the penultimate lap. I decided to go for it. Then I said to myself, if I slip, I hope to drop Jorge as well. There was little room, I downshifted a gear, from third to second. That’s how I knew I was going to complete the overtake. Those six seconds were the apotheosis.”

“Simoncelli’s death was really a shock because I lost a friend, but more importantly I was part of the’fatal crash. There were 22 riders on the track and at that moment I was the one who hit him…I didn&#8217t think about quitting, though. I made an examination of conscience, I realized that I had not been able to avoid that fatality. I was left with the regret of losing a great friend.”

He closed on the’farewell to racing: “Managing Director Jarvis came to Tavullia to tell me that they were going to take Fabio Quartararo in my place. I blew him away by asking him to switch to the Petronas satellite team, and Lin did not object. When I fell heavily at Assen, I thought about quitting. Chance would have it that, just in those days, Francesca and I learned that Giulietta” would arrive.