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he will lose his life

in a freak accident

at the San Marino race,

struck by two other bikes after he

fell directly in front of them.

It's that kind of reality

that you don't want to see,

because you don't think

it will happen to you.

It's something, you know it's

there, but it's better not to look.

Mugello

belongs to Valentino Rossi.

He's won nine Grand Prixs

in all classes here,

including seven consecutively

in the premier class.

It's a special

place for him,

and he always brings

something special to wear.

Mugello is the classic

special helmet of the year.

Many times,

he was able to do the best

with the special helmets.

The face was the most famous

special helmet of Valentino.

To be honest,

a few days before,

we have no idea about what can

be the next special helmet.

I asked him

to talk about Mugello.

We was talking

about Casanova-Savelli,

you know, there is that

going down to the hill.

And then he show me, when you

go down, the face you have...

Yeah, and he makes

a special face

and they say,

"Do it one more time."

He do it, I take

a picture and I said,

"Okay, that is the new

helmet for Mugello. "

We are working with a lot of

riders and for everyone, I think,

to have the right color

or the right cartoon

or something that

they have in their heart,

maybe one image,

maybe one special sign,

makes the rider

more comfortable.

The story of humanity is full

of these kinds of things.

The soldiers,

the cavaliers in the past,

the Indians in America,

they take colors

with the hands

and put it on

the face to be strong,

to be more aggressive or maybe

to take away their fear.

So, the colors, they can help

a man to be more strong.

It's like when

Superman put the suit on.

So when I put my yellow leather

suit, it's not just protection,

but also

psychological effect.

A MotoGP bike is a

machine with a human at one end

and a small patch

of rubber at the other.

In the middle is an engine generating

an enormous amount of power.

The job of the rider

and his team is to figure out

how to get as much of

that power to the ground

for as much of

every lap as possible.

The bikes are pure prototypes,

costing tens of millions of dollars

and created

exclusively for racing.

These are the numbers,

the minimum machinery

for the maximum performance,

far more power-to-weight

than a Formula One car,

more speed, too.

Over 210 miles an hour

at tracks like Mugello,

where an F1 car

tops out at 200.

The big difference

is that, in the car racing,

they are able to understand all

the things from the computer,

because the driver

is stuck on the car.

In the bike, it's a lot more difficult

to understand what's happened,

because more movement of the rider

changes all the balance of the bike.

For this reason, it's more

important, the experience

and the indication

of the rider.

In Italian, the word for a

motorcycle racer is centauro, a centaur,

the mythical animal

that is half-man, half-horse.

But it's no myth.

A MotoGP bike is a prosthetic

limb for speed freaks.

The engineer's job

is to make the bike

an extension of

the rider's body,

moving in every

direction with him,

giving him the feedback

he needs to go faster.

When I was a small kid,

I really wanted to be

an airplane engineer.

But after World War II,

we are kind of forbidden to make

airplanes, from the United States.

So most of the good engineers went

to automotives or motorcycles.

That's why the motorcycle

engineering is very good in Japan,

because a motorcycle

is next to an airplane,

much more

similar dynamics.

So, looks like

a simple vehicle,

but, actually, it's pretty much

complicated in the 3D moving,

more than

the four-wheeled cars.

A motorcycle at this

level is basically flying on the ground.

So, a motorcycle comes along,

pitches into a corner,

it gets to 60 degrees.

There's two gravities

going down through the tire.

That's exactly the same

as of any aircraft

which goes into a corner.

There's two gravities

trying to pull the wings off.

The physics of doing 140 miles

an hour with your knee on the ground,

everything's trying to suck

itself into the ground.

This weight should make the

bike fall into the corner.

But, because of the speed

and other forces,

force that's centrifugal,

that makes these two

forces in equilibrium.

That's why the bike can lean

and don't fall into the curve.

When you run

around the corner,

the force wants to

throw you to the outside,

so you counteract it

by leaning to the inside.

Same with a motorcycle.

Everyone who's ridden a

bicycle has that experience.

It's not that

far away, really.

They just go

a hell of a lot faster.

When it's on its side,

the entire bike must

flex to absorb the bumps,

because the suspension cannot move

up and down when it's horizontal.

The chassis has to be flexible.

It's a controlled flex.

To quote one of the Honda

Japanese, "it bends like a tree.

"It bends and returns

to its position."

On Sundays,

they are gladiators.

But on Fridays and Saturdays,

during practice and qualifying,

the riders and their teams are

more like research scientists.

Their subject?

Bending the laws of physics

as far as possible.

Every track

has its own attitude

of what the bike

needs to be set at.

The tarmac surface,

cambers, off-cambers,

maybe some uphills,

downhills,

tighter corners, slower

corners, faster corners.

If you can get a bike

that works 85%, 90%, that's good.

It's never going

to be perfect,

because you have so many different

types of corners on a track.

You're going to go through

a corner and be like,

"Okay, it's awesome

through there."

You get to a hairpin and

you're like, "It's a wreck. "

You gotta at least try to keep the

traction just a little bit longer

till we can start driving,

because I can't roll with that.

So, right in here,

it's still skatey

when you're going

to the throttle,

then it transfers,

then it grips.

Yeah.

All I try

and do is make him

as comfortable as

he can be on the bike.

Once he's comfortable,

then he can go do his job.

It's doing everything

okay, but...

It always feels like

there's a little something

here you could make better.

You could make this better, get

a little more feel out of that,

have a little more

traction here.

There could always be something

a little bit better.

A MotoGP bike

is so finicky.

It sounds stupid,

but one mil here,

one mil there,

which is nothing,

you go out and you come in

and go, "I can't ride it. "

I mean, it's crazy.

I don't like.

Every rider

wants the same thing.

The ability to feel

the track through the bike,

to sense exactly

what's happening

where the tires

touch the asphalt.

With feel comes confidence,

with confidence comes speed.

You ask anybody,

"Do you want more front end feel

or do you want more horsepower?"

Everybody's always gonna say,

"More front end feel. "

Once you get a

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