As usual in winter, Carmelo Ezpeleta made a very serious little courtesy visit Spanish media AS.com.
Obviously, he dropped a few short sentences to answer the questions that preoccupy journalists at the start of the season, starting with the Rossi/Marquez subject, whose discord leaves some questions about the first Grands Prix to come…
Carmelo Ezpeleta : “It doesn’t change anything that there isn’t peace. You can't force Messi to be friends with Cristiano Ronaldo, and with Rossi and Márquez it's the same thing, they don't need to be friends. »
The boss of Dorna is therefore philosophical, but also somewhat mysterious about the Sepang collision: “I don’t want to talk about that much. Both of us and I know what happened, but that's what anyone who normally looks at motorcycles knows. »
Another subject which sowed discord at the end of last season, the Valencia Grand Prix, with accusations launched against Marc Marquez of playing into the hands of Jorge Lorenzo: “I don’t believe there was an arrangement. Things happened as they happened and there was no agreement between Lorenzo and Márquez.” Let us simply note that these comments neither exclude nor confirm a possible unsporting attitude on the part of Marc Marquez…
In any case, however high profile it may have been, such an end to the championship is not the wish of the Spanish businessman: “I will not sign this year for another end of the championship like that of last year, even if it was very well publicized. We don't need that to have a spectacle on the track and the attention of sports fans. If we could avoid what happened in the last two Grands Prix, it would be better. I'm signing up for a media World Cup like it was up to Malaysia. What happened next was not positive.”
Carmelo Ezpeleta then tersely confirmed that Valentino Rossi was “hot” at the start of the season, which undoubtedly promises us some great battles with Marc Marquez.
Anecdotally, the Grand Prix organizer revealed some of the comments he made to Marc Marquez last season: “Last year, I told him that he had to skip school, the day we learned to be second or third, because without those points that he lost for not having complied, he would still have arrived in Valencia with an option for the title.”
The Director General of Dorna then concluded by specifying that “sanctions regarding each race will be stated during each race” and no longer taken later, and that his dream of seeing 18 drivers in the same second, 7 of whom would have a chance of winning, was about to come true...
