Valentino Rossi and Barry Sheene part 1 – Phillip Island 2003
SLICK EXCERPT #20
It is sunny but a cold wind is blowing on Sunday, October 19, 2003. After all, Phillip Island is often like this in the spring. That wind coming up from the Tasman Sea and into Melbourne Bay now faces Valentino Rossi as he faces the podium, smiling and satisfied, enjoying the embrace of a crowd he has entertained and amused in his own way.
The final standings indicate an indisputable victory, sanctioned by a 5 “212 lead over the runner-up, Loris Capirossi, yet those numbers do not give the measure of the gap he put between himself and the others. Above all, they do not explain what happened. Valentino Rossi actually exhibited an embarrassing advantage, identifiable in over 15”. A number that does not appear on the official standings, because of a kind of magic: Valentino turned the race into a sensational comeback in which at one point he had to pass seven opponents without ever meet any of them. That is, he stayed ahead of everyone all the time, yet he was behind and busy coming up.
The trick of course is there, but to figure it out you need to move the hands of the clock by about fifty minutes. When the riders stand on the starting grid, it is sunny but cold. And the wind has been blowing since morning. Valentino takes his Honda to the first box, the pole box, and looks ahead to the sea. He is finally relaxed, because he has achieved the two most important goals he set for himself this season: one more important than the other.
Exactly one week ago he was world champion again:seven days earlier, in Malaysia, he secured his second MotoGP title, his third consecutive in the premier class, and his fifth overall considering those in 125 and 250. Then he arranged his future:very few people know that he is already virtually a Yamaha rider, that is, the agreement for the 2004-2005 seasons has already been reached.
Valentino Rossi wants to win the Australian Grand Prix for several reasons, but certainly because he has decided to dedicate this race to Barry Sheene, who passed away earlier this fall, that is, in March. So he has prepared something for the lap of honor, which he wants to ride as a winner and not as a runner-up, to best honor a rider to whom he was also close. Valentino always had a special understanding with the British star who had been residing in Australia for 20 years now. They had last seen each other during the Grand Prix weekend in 2002: everyone knew Sheene was battling illness, however, he had shown himself as always smiling, kind. He did not give the idea of someone who he knew his months were numbered. And this had impressed Valentino in no small part.
When the race starts Valentino after the first two corners finds himself in the grip of a group of rivals who on the initial sprint have overtaken him. He decides to be cautious. He really set off with the idea of not risking anything. So he waits three laps to send his Michelin tyres up to temperature and in the meantime looks for an idea to get the company of Bayliss, Capirossi, Melandri, Gibernau, Hayden, Biaggi off his back. They seem to want to trap him, so he decides. to break free immediately. In one lap he makes a great leap that takes him from fourth to first position, then once in the lead he pushes to pull away just a little so that everyone knows that there is nothing to do against him that day.
So on lap 5 the problem becomes one of finding a second idea, one that will allow him to chase away the boredom as a long solo gallop looms. The cue comes to him from the outside: after a few laps Race Direction announces that it has decided to penalize him 10 seconds because on his attack lap, when he passed Melandri at Turn 4 a marshal was waving a yellow flag. That is, the signal that you cannot overtake at that point. Valentino did not notice because the yellow flag and the marshal were out of his field of vision, so he does not realize what is happening. As he passes over the finish line he spots on the left the sign of Gary Coleman, the signalman in Team Honda, but as he passes to beyond 300 per hour, moreover without suspecting anything, he does not understand it.
He waits for the next lap, looks closer, but cannot decipher that strange signal: “P8 -10.” “pi eight minus ten, but what the fuck does that mean!” he asks himself as he drives. There is no radio link with the pit, so he has to get there on his own. And at some point he gets there: he realizes that at the end of the race they will take 10 seconds off his total time, so while he is driving he is virtually in Position 8. That’s what “P8 -10” means. “It’s the yellow flags!” he immediately thinks. “But I don’t lose two wins because of the flags that can’t be seen!”
He doesn’t fidget, he doesn’t gesture to his box, he doesn’t even turn back. He has already done the calculations. He has to build up as large a margin as possible over second, so that he will give up as few seconds as possible when, at the end, the computer subtracts 10. With a little more than half the race left, the feat can be attempted: “I have nothing to lose, so I can take a chance to win this race.” He continues to drive smoothly. He does not try to send signals to his box. He simply changes pace.
The men in his team focus their gaze on the screens showing the timeline: the answers must come from there. And they come right away. Lap 15 Valentino runs it in 1’32″057, which is half a second less than the previous lap (1’32″514), then on Lap 16 he prints a 1’31″843. That’s seven tenths less than on lap 14. The Team Honda men exchange a reassuring glance.
No words are needed; everyone understands that the show has just begun. From that point on, Valentino Rossi stays under 1’32 “for nine more laps. That’s another nine laps of anthology. Lap 17, 1’31” 723. Lap 18, 1’31 “421. Lap 19, 1’31” 776. Lap 20, 1’31 “593. Lap 21, 1’31” 587. Lap 22, 1’31 “655. Lap 23, 1’31” 973. Lap 24, 1’31 “746. Lap 25, 1’31” 984. Then he set 1’32″001 on lap 26, the penultimate, because he no longer needed to push: his lead had increased to 14″ over the second, Loris Capirossi, after Valentino had already cancelled the penalty on lap 23, having accumulated a margin of 10″392.
Yet he had kept pushing, partly because he is driving in a state of grace and then because he wants to humiliate Race Direction. He actually humbles everyone: no one else can go below the 1’32” mark, even for one lap. He, on the other hand, has it for 11 consecutive times. In the parc ferme Loris Capirossi’s eyes open wide when they report what happened without his knowledge: “But I didn’t realize I could win!” reacts Loris.
“At first I could have gone faster, but I didn’t know I had that chance because I didn’t understand the signs-I could see them, but I thought it was my advantage over those behind….”
Then he shakes his head, “I didn’t understand a fucking thing!” The first to pick up Valentino’s explanation is Mick Doohan, who comments from the pits that day for Australian television. That is, he does what Barry Sheene did before he got sick. When the five-time 500 champion handed Valentino the microphone, he flashed him a complicit smile-Mick understood right away how it was going to turn out; he, too, enjoyed the show.
“At the beginning I had a little better pace than the others, the wind was bothering, and I decided to take the lead right away,” Valentino explained in English, to the Australians. “I wanted to manage the race by myself, then from the pit box I saw the” P8 -10 “sign. It took me a few laps to realize it had to do with the yellow flags, which I didn’t see because they are always signaled wrong. Just as they were signaled wrong at Donington, when they took away my victory in June. I thought about it right away, then I got angry and I said, eh no, throwing away two wins in a season for yellow flags is too much.” As Valentino talks to Mick Doohan, at the microphone, he still holds in his hands the flag with which he took the lap of honor. A special flag that got everyone excited.
After arriving, a friendly hand handed him a black rod to which was hooked a thickly crafted, white fabric imprinted with a giant picture of a number 7. Not just any “seven,” but an exact reproduction of Barry Sheene’s distinctive brand. Valentino confirms that he has accomplished his mission: to make sure that Sheene’s legendary number seven could ride a victory lap of honor in Australia, the very nation where he had died seven months earlier. For years it had been Sheene waiting for him in the Phillip Island parc ferme, with a microphone on Australian television. And in October 2002 Sheene had wanted to take a souvenir photo with Valentino and his son Freddie, a teenage motorcycle enthusiast and admirer of the new Grand Prix superstar.
For Barry Sheene, that trip with his son would prove to be his last appearance at a public event. After the race, after the lap of honor, after the podium ceremony, Valentino Rossi adjusted his yellow woolen cap, to protect himself from the cold, then began to tell. “When I arrived at Phillip Island, realizing that Barry would never come to the race again gave me a bad feeling. When the news of his passing had come in March, it had been hard to accept. So I decided to ride the lap of honor with his number; Barry was one of my heroes.”
Finally, Valentino reveals the backstory that brings the curtain fittingly down on this exciting and memorable day. He explains that he did not have many means at
arrangement to create the celebratory flag, so he and his friends decided to appropriate a hotel sheet. “I borrowed it,” he points out, raising even more eyebrows. “Then we had the silhouette of his number 7 imprinted on the sheet.” In front of the audience of journalists, including Australians, who are already wondering how he will get on with the hotel management, Valentino acquits himself in his own way. He flashes one of his seductive smiles, the kind that also characterized Barry
Sheene, and closes the discussion with a simple, “Sorry Hotel, I had no other solution!” And it ends in laughter. It comes natural to think that this scene would have appealed so much to Barry Sheene, who in common with Valentino had (among many other things) a flash of genius, a flair for showmanship, a ready wit, a taste for fun, and a passion for teasing. People who only needed a joke and a smile to solve an awkward issue.
Sure, the way Barry Sheene usually celebrated was a bit more transgressive, but his were other times. Those were the exciting, crazy, dangerous 1970s.