Hitting the Apex Page #3

a lot of injuries.

So, yes, it's scary

because he's my father.

It will happen.

Learning means crashing.

When you're out

to extract the maximum

from a 240-horsepower motorcycle,

there's no other way.

Go over the limit

and then you know where it is.

A fast rider

can learn to stop crashing.

A slow rider cannot learn to go fast.

You have to do it. You have to crash.

And you have to learn from it

if you want to stay around.

There's many examples in this world

of a very fast rider, but not smart.

And their career's been very short.

To be fast is not enough.

You need to have a combination

of being fast and brave

and also be intelligent.

In his rookie year in MotoGP,

Jorge Lorenzo once crashed

three times in a single weekend.

I thought I was invincible.

And I was not afraid to get hurt.

I was not afraid

of these kind of bikes,

going at 340 kilometers per hour.

I didn't care.

It was a normal thing

to crash so many times.

And then suddenly I realize,

OK, I need to stop.

I need to change my mentality.

I need to be more calm.

I need to... to think more on the bike.

We've been looking at the

training that American fighter pilots do

and also how

the Israeli special forces train.

The theory is that it's all in the mind

so we work directly

with the mind of the rider.

There is no correct way

to ride a MotoGP machine.

The objective is to go as fast

as possible and stay on the bike.

How you do that is up to you.

I came from dirt tracks.

I came from sliding.

I'm more than comfortable

when the bike's going sideways.

It's one of the mysteries of the sport.

How two riders with styles

as different as Stoner's and Lorenzo's

can go round a three-mile race track

within a thousandth of a second

of each other.

Stoner sideways, shaking and sliding.

Lorenzo as if on rails.

I'm pushing 100%

and I'm going at the maximum.

I am feeling the limit in every corner.

I'm trying to be perfect.

Every time he won a grand prix,

the church bells in Rossi's home town

rang out in celebration.

105 times from 1996 to 2010.

Then he moved to Ducati.

And the bells stopped ringing.

Ducati was an experience.

Let's not say a happy experience.

He suffered.

When Jorge Lorenzo

won the world title in 2010,

Yamaha offered to keep Rossi on

if he'd take a pay cut and accept

number two status in the team.

After a decade, as one of the highest

paid sportsmen in the world,

he might not have needed the money,

but Rossi had always been number one.

Casey Stoner had taken the best bike

available for 2011.

He was leaving Ducati

for Repsol Honda,

the team of his childhood hero,

Mick Doohan.

Rossi now did

what everybody hoped he would.

He said goodbye to his beloved Yamaha

and he moved to Ducati.

The Italian dream team was born.

I remember writing if he wins a race,

it would be like the Pope

winning at Monza in a Ferrari.

And it would be a fantastic story.

But it was an unmitigated disaster.

Casey Stoner had won

23 races for the Italian team.

None of the other Ducati riders

could come close.

In 2009, when I first got on the bike,

I couldn't believe

how Casey could go so fast with it.

Casey had extreme talent.

Stoner's success rate at

Ducati had declined over time, though.

Ten wins the first year, then six,

then four, then three.

He had also missed three races

through illness in 2009.

Many thought the declining results

were due to his health problems.

They were wrong.

Stoner wasn't getting worse

as the years went by.

The bike was.

I had a very bad feeling.

From the first time in Valencia.

And I was very, very...

Not desperate, but very worried

to make the wrong choice.

We copped a lot of flak

from Valentino.

Not just me but my whole team.

Valentino and Jerry Burgess

and all that.

They'd said so many bad things

about what Ducati had done

and what myself and my crew had done.

It really frustrated me.

Rossi was hampered

by a shoulder injury

from a crash on a dirt bike

in early 2010.

At first he was in bad shape

with his shoulder

but then we realized

the bike was in bad shape as well.

Rossi was 15th fastest

at the MotoGP test in Valencia.

Stoner was fastest on the Honda.

After the test,

Rossi went back to Italy

for surgery to repair his shoulder.

Four months later,

it was time to go racing.

Stoner won the first grand prix

of 2011 in Qatar.

Rossi was seventh.

The rain in Spain at the second race

was good news for the Italian team.

The wet conditions lowered speeds

and reduced the forces

which unsettled the Ducati in the dry.

Rossi set the fastest lap in the race

and looked on course for a win.

He just needed to get past

Stoner and Simoncelli.

And now Valentino Rossi

has got Casey Stoner in his sight.

He's taken down Stoner!

Valentino Rossi attacked

from a long way back

and he's taken out Casey Stoner.

Rossi's got back on the track.

Stoner's still having problems.

Hey, how's the shoulder? It's OK?

I'm very sorry.

You having some problem

with your shoulder?

Obviously your ambition

outweighed your talent.

I'm very sorry.

No problem.

I had the helmet,

I didn't hear very well.

What was it?

Your ambition outweighed your talent!

Oh, my golly!

What a thing for Casey Stoner

to say to the nine-time world champion.

I want to say that I don't want

to hear what he said. It was better.

At that time,

I don't think there was truer words.

A big part of why I said it

was I have no respect for someone

who comes into a garage

with their helmet on to apologize.

You don't do that.

It's not the way it's done.

So, yeah, it frustrated me a little bit

and, erm, you know,

I kind of won't deny

that I enjoyed those two years.

Watching him struggle a heck of

a lot more than we did on the Ducati.

Bad, bad.

It just got worse.

The longer he was there,

the worse the bike became.

They went forwards

and then they went backwards,

they never got there.

He never said anything bad about it

although he must have

wanted to inside.

He kept quiet.

We have a lot of work to do.

I lose too much in entry.

I have too much slide.

We try a lot of different things

with the setting, but we don't fix.

We're struggling.

We need more experience on this bike.

I am very slow. Very negative.

We are not strong enough.

His face was no longer that smiling,

calm face.

I didn't know what to say

and nor did he.

We are very, very sad.

I lost the front,

but seriously, I don't understand why.

Something wasn't right in the team.

We work together with Ducati.

We try,

but at this moment we don't fix a lot.

It can be just a centimeter here

or there that makes the difference.

These are the secrets

which only they know.

The first year he crashed a lot

which meant he was trying.

It's not like he wasn't trying,

he was giving it everything.

Rossi wasn't the only one

crashing too much in 2011.

Marco Simoncelli

was chasing his first podium.

Marco Simoncelli is never

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