As at every Grand Prix since the start of the season, Hervé Poncharal is kind enough to share with us his vision of the last race.
In this first part, the boss of the Monster Yamaha Tech3 team simply describes the show he attended. In the second, we will try to understand the reasons…
Hervé, how would you describe this Spanish Grand Prix?
Hervé Poncharal: “in terms of spectacle and intensity, it was relatively boring compared to what we could expect given the tests and the first three Grands Prix we attended.
On the other hand, it was interesting, very interesting, on the technical level and in terms of the hierarchy of machines and drivers. It's been a very long time, if ever as you pointed out, since we've seen such a performance from Valentino Rossi. Already, a pole position is not the favorite exercise in which he excels, with, in addition, a number of incredibly fast laps in a row. It's also rare that we see Valentino Rossi start in the lead and be so combative and bleeding on the first laps; generally, he lets the young people get excited, then he gets back on them at the end of the race. And there, we witnessed Valentino Rossi who flew over the debates, and the two drivers who we consider to be the fastest in the championship today, Lorenzo and Marquez, surrendered, that was clear.
I think he showed incredible intelligence. He understood, from the tests, that we would all have a lot of skating and when the weather on Sunday, from noon or 13 p.m., clearly showed that we would have the hottest track of the weekend, he made people talk. his intelligence and experience. Because he had the same problems as everyone else, we know that internally, but he managed them better and that is great art, piloting and intelligence.
I think it's a performance that will go down in Valentino Rossi's history as one of his most beautiful races, because we all know his age, and everyone said, and I wasn't far away to think so too, that 2015 was perhaps the last opportunity to win a title, and there, he made an incredible demonstration of his talent, his intelligence and his fighting spirit.
It was wonderful! »
