Between Misano and Donington Park, we were able to quickly converse with Valentine Debise, currently 2nd in the World Supersport Championship (WorldSSP).
🎤 Valentin, we didn't get you about the last race at Misano, where you had a rather mixed weekend. Can you tell us about it? what happened, After
the first race you won ?
Valentine Debise “First of all, it’s a circuit I really like, but it’s a circuit where I struggle to go fast every year. The only way I can go fast is by pushing myself incredibly hard. And as a result, I finish the races completely exhausted every year, so I expected to be in trouble. In the end, I managed to win the first race, not because I had the best speed, but because I was a bit smarter than my competitor. Then, in the second race, it started getting a bit hotter, and we know that it’s harder to compete in the heat. It was already warm on Saturday, but not extremely hot, let’s say. And after Aragon, we had already made some changes to the bike that helped to mitigate our problem. However, on Sunday, it was too hot, and so we had the same consequences: we lost a bit of power, which meant I couldn’t go fast.” In fact, like at Aragon, when I'm riding solo, I'm doing the same lap time as the leader, but when I'm in a group, I'm almost a second slower. So you can imagine that when everyone is bunched up, and you're losing almost a second a lap, you get overtaken all the time. That's what happened. And on top of that, when you're back in a group, you get jostled and you find yourself in trouble.
🎤 Thanks, that helps to understand, because it's true that from the outside, we didn't really understand the difference between the two races. What are they forecasting at Donington? A heatwave like in France or cooler?
“I have to tell you, I’ve been checking it every day for the past week (laughs), even though I never usually look at the weather forecast. It’s supposed to be quite hot on Friday, then it looks like it’ll drop on Saturday and Sunday. Right now, I checked this morning, and on Saturday, the temperatures went up a bit, so that’s annoying. But on Sunday, they’re only forecasting 24 degrees, so that would be absolutely ideal. So yeah, we’re praying for cold weather!”
🎤 Are you doing the rain dance?
“Well, as for the rain, I don’t know because we haven’t actually ridden the motorcycle in the rain yet. So I can’t tell you how it will go if it rains.”
🎤 Okay, we'll see about that this weekend. We don't want to take up too much of your time before you hop on the plane, but just a quick word about Rémy Sanjuan, following your announcement during a difficult week for him, as he lost his coach Franck Larrive…
“Yeah, Rémy is a rider I've known for a while, and I met him at the beginning of the year because we're in the same motorcycle club. I saw him again and I really liked his approach because he's one of the few riders who actually manages to find his own sponsors. We always hear that racing is expensive: yes, it's expensive, we know that. And so, now, finding money is a factor in performance. So seeing how he works, his mentality, I was really impressed. So I decided to support him because this year, financially, I have a bit more leeway than last year. So I decided to give him some money and advice if he asks. I'm not going to tell him anything unless he asks me. So, he keeps me updated on what he's doing, and it's nice to follow his season. So, we took the opportunity to go with Baptiste, my videographer, on the Junior World Champion's sleeve (MotoJunior) in Barcelona. And so we made a short video about him to follow his journey, to introduce him, to highlight him, and to indirectly thank his partners by filming him and featuring him on my youtube channel.
And at the same time, I was able to observe the other French drivers, and frankly, I was really pleasantly surprised to see the overall level of the French drivers, which has increased dramatically in just a few years. And that's really thanks, I want to emphasize, to the efforts of the Federation and also Claude Michy and other people—I'm not going to name everyone, but other people who are involved with the drivers. For example, David Da Costa has drivers who follow him 100% (Juan Eric Gomez and Frédéric Protat). Guillem Planques, He's really well supported, with his father taking good care of him. Etc. So it's great to see that people are working hard. Since a lot of people have started helping young riders, there's always a lot of inertia involved, but it's happening! Two years ago, I would have told you, "It's going to be tough to get guys into Grand Prix racing," but now, I'm quite confident, based on what I've seen and the level of competition. There's a big difference between Junior and World Championship racing, but in any case, quite a few are on the right track, so that's encouraging.
🎤 Indeed, whether in Moto4 or Moto3, we can see that they are clearly getting closer to the front, and we know that this is the way to go to reach the Grand Prix.
Regarding the partners, we'll take advantage of the summer break to give a report on the day you kindly invited us to. And have a great weekend at Donington Park!
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