SuperBike Magazine July 2020
The July issue is packed with awesome content to keep you busy over the remaining days of July. We are hard at work putting our August issue to bed!
The July issue is packed with awesome content to keep you busy over the remaining days of July. We are hard at work putting our August issue to bed!
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anyone could dislike him - he’s very easy<br />
to love. Yamaha has a very exciting team<br />
for the future now. I think it’s the first time<br />
I’ve ever wanted someone apart from me<br />
to win! I couldn’t win last year so I liked it<br />
when Marc was able to for the team, but<br />
now I really want to see Valentino, Maverick<br />
and Fabio winning. Hopefully, Franco<br />
can make the last step as well.<br />
How is your relationship with Valentino<br />
now?<br />
It’s very difficult to be friendly with a direct<br />
competitor, especially when we’re all<br />
killers in MotoGP. Marc is a killer, Valentino<br />
is a killer, I’m a killer; we all want to<br />
win and we never want to give anything to<br />
the others. That makes it hard to communicate,<br />
to spend time together, or to<br />
have empathy for the other. You don’t hate<br />
them, but you want them to go as slow<br />
as possible and to be able to beat them<br />
every time. When something as emotional<br />
as Sepang in 2015 happens, the friction<br />
causes a fire and the relationship is even<br />
worse. I’ve always said that with Valentino,<br />
the further apart we are the better the<br />
relationship we have, at least until now!<br />
The best relationship we had in the past<br />
was when he was at Ducati or when I was<br />
at Ducati. But we’re closer than ever now,<br />
maybe because our shared interest is to<br />
see Yamaha winning.<br />
are haters at least a little bit, because<br />
envy is a human feeling - and you<br />
need to live with it.<br />
Are you excited to be working with<br />
Yamaha and especially with Fabio<br />
in <strong>2020</strong>?<br />
Right now, Yamaha is the only team<br />
that has three riders that can win<br />
races and fight for the championship.<br />
Honda only has Marc for the moment,<br />
Suzuki only has Rins because Mir still<br />
has to score his first podium. Ducati<br />
maybe has three, but Yamaha has<br />
more chance to win with their three.<br />
If you know Fabio as a person you<br />
know that he never fights with anyone<br />
and he’s always smiling. He changes<br />
a lot when he’s in race mode and<br />
becomes very electric with a lot of<br />
energy, but when he takes off his helmet<br />
he’s a very cool kid. I don’t think<br />
Do you have a plan to make some wildcard<br />
appearances in <strong>2020</strong>?<br />
For the moment nothing is confirmed,<br />
although people have been speaking a lot<br />
about Montmelo. I’ll be there to see the<br />
winners of my helmet giveaway, but I don’t<br />
know if I’ll be there as a spectator or as a<br />
rider. It’ll depend a lot on my feeling with<br />
the bike, because if I’m quite competitive<br />
and if I have the pace to finish a race then<br />
maybe. It’s not the same thing to be fast<br />
and to have race pace.<br />
Would success in them tempt you back<br />
to racing full time?<br />
For the moment I’m happy with the role<br />
that I have because I can enjoy life in a<br />
way I haven’t for twenty years. I’ve got a<br />
lot of things I want to do, other projects<br />
and new things. But in life you never know.<br />
After Valencia it was 99% no, and now it’s<br />
maybe 98%. If it’s grown 1% in two months<br />
maybe it’ll keep growing in the future, but<br />
for now it’s a no.
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