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is himself, not the bike.

So he came to me and

talked about that story.

So, I was really hungry

to get the win.

So that was a good time to talk to

each other, to make a good bike.

In Masao Furusawa,

Rossi had the engineering genius

he needed to redesign

the Yamaha.

Now, he just needed

the mechanical genius

to optimize the bike

for each race,

his crew chief at Honda,

Jeremy Burgess,

the only man in MotoGP with more

world titles to his name than Rossi.

You're always trying to give

him the best bike for the job.

The motorcycle is a tool

to assist an individual

to do what he loves to do.

My job is, essentially, to sharpen

the tool so he can do it.

The Australian

prepared the bikes

for Wayne Gardner

and Mick Doohan,

taking six world titles with

them, and then three with Rossi.

But always with Honda.

My team say, at the beginning,

"You are f***ing crazy

"to go with Yamaha!

We'll remain with Honda.

"It's a lot

more easy."

You only meet one

Valentino Rossi in your life.

We could be racing

lawn mowers, you know?

I do it because

I love to win,

and he's the guy

we can win with.

Honda held Rossi

to his contract to the end

so that he couldn't test the Yamaha

at all until the year was out,

putting his new team at a further

disadvantage going into 2004.

Nobody expected us to do

any good the first year,

particularly the first race.

Realistically, you think,

nobody could win

on that bike.

Biaggi just holds firm.

Rossi very, very close indeed.

Biaggi runs it wide an inch,

Rossi will be through.

But there's no way through at the

moment for the Yamaha rider.

Time's up,

Rossi goes through.

There was an inch,

and Rossi's done it.

And there's nothing

Biaggi can do about it.

They brake for

the left-hander!

Rossi's just a little

bit out of shape,

but somehow he hangs

on to the Yamaha.

I mean, Valentino put in an

extra effort to win that race.

Rossi's gonna do it!

Valentino Rossi wins

the African Grand Prix

from Max Biaggi!

There was a lot of

emotion in that first weekend

for him to win on that bike.

Trust me, it wasn't a given.

That victory

cemented the Rossi legend.

No one had ever

done this before,

win the last race of the year

for one manufacturer,

and the first race of the

next season for another.

It also buried Biaggi

as a serious challenger.

He won only

one more Grand Prix

and was left without a MotoGP

ride at the end of 2005.

I have the 2004 bike of Welkom,

the real one, in my bathroom?

Bedroom! Bedroom, sorry!

It's in the bedroom.

No, it's not in the toilet.

It's in the bedroom.

Every morning, when I

wake up, I see my bike,

and I have some socks

sometimes on the bike,

but anyways,

it's a great memory.

He's a charmer,

you know? He's star material,

whatever sport

he'd be in.

But apart from that,

he's a ruthless killer.

I always feel people

need reminding of that.

He really is a savage

competitor,

not in a way of

being dangerous,

but of being very dedicated to

winning, at almost any cost.

Sete Gibernau leads.

Look at the crowd!

One hundred twenty-seven thousand

Spaniards go absolutely crazy.

Into the right-hander!

Rossi's got the inside.

Rossi's back in front,

he runs it wide.

Now, who has the first position for

the right-hander? It's Gibernau.

Rossi's surely gonna try and

get up the inside of Gibernau.

Gibernau holds

the pole position.

They brake for the left-hander.

Rossi up the inside!

They touch!

Oh, they touched.

Rossi. Gibernau's

running wide.

Rossi's punted him

off the track!

Rossi's gonna take victory

in the Spanish Grand Prix!

Gibernau's in the gravel.

Can he get back on the track

in time to take second?

Do they get any

better than that?

That was a strong move.

Yeah.

That was a Simoncelli move.

We're just seeing it again,

the replay here, and I don't know,

Rossi is very, very deep.

As you say, his foot came off.

You can see the contact here

better than anywhere else, but...

It was the

last corner, you know?

You have to try.

The Spanish crowd here,

the whole stand in front

of me are singing fuera,

which means "out. " They want

Rossi banned from this race.

It's thumbs down all the way

in front of me here.

They're whistling and

booing Valentino Rossi.

What a start

to the season!

If you're a racer, actually, all

that matters is winning, isn't it?

What he's here

to do is win.

Look at the way

he destroyed Max Biaggi.

He destroyed

Sete Gibernau.

This is motorcycle,

and it's very good that

you have a hard fight,

like, in my case,

with Biaggi, with Gibernau,

and especially, at the end,

with Stoner in Laguna Seca.

Rossi and Gibernau

had been feuding for a while.

In 2004,

Rossi vowed that the Spaniard

would never win another race.

Gibernau never did.

He left the sport

for good in 2009.

Casey Stoner

is a different story.

He beat Rossi fair

and square in 2007,

winning 10 races

to Rossi's four.

This was the first year of the

new 800cc MotoGP formula,

Stoner's first year on the Ducati,

and only his second in MotoGP.

The Australian on the Italian

bike took everybody by surprise,

including himself.

Qatar, there's

no way we thought

we were gonna win

the world championship,

but we went out there

and we won the first race,

we won the third race,

we won the fourth race.

Epic battle at the front.

Stoner tries it in the

right-hander, through turn three.

A long radius, right-hander.

And Stoner's through.

Till now, I think,

the Stoner of two years ago

has been the fastest

Valentino met,

because it was so difficult to

understand why Stoner was so fast.

Stoner leads the way!

Rossi's gonna try to

get back to the front.

Rossi back in front, but

he runs a little bit wide.

I think so,

Stoner goes back in front.

I think it wasn't till

maybe race eight or nine

that we were

starting to go,

"Okay, we've actually got a

shot at the championship here."

Casey Stoner wins

the Grand Prix at Catalunyal

What a race!

On top of that, Stoner's

world championship on the Ducati

was the first time in over 30 years

that a European manufacturer

had beaten the Japanese

in the premier class.

Stoner

has a great talent,

and sometimes it's

impressive how fast he is.

In three laps, he made

the lap record, as you say.

Impressive, but if you work step by

step, it's possible to fight with him.

Nine races

into the 2008 season,

Rossi was leading

the championship.

But Stoner was on a winning

streak and closing in fast.

At Laguna Seca,

where he triumphed in 2007

and where Ross:

had never won,

the Australian was

fastest in practice

and starting the race

from pole position.

He looked unbeatable.

In Laguna, at that point, Casey had

won three races in succession,

and we had to stop that run,

and it looked like

he was going to win

another one,

and this is what

Casey thought.

Clearly, that was the thing that we

had to attack, was Casey's belief

that it was a foregone conclusion

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