#by carlo pernat

[kwisatzworld]

The truth is that as a boy Valentino had the same relationship with Ferrari that I have with Sampdoria. I don’t know why. He hated the red car. At the end of October 1997, there was the infamous contact between Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve, with the German off the track and Villeneuve winning the Formula 1 World Champion. We were in Jerez with Rossi for Aprilia testing. He went on the track to collect some sort of “souvenir” from the incident. Valentino was a fan of Jacques, who was racing for Williams. He was desperate to meet him, and I had good relations with Renault’s deputy executive director, Carlos Ghosn. Ivano Beggio had plans to use Renault dealerships to distribute Aprilias abroad, and we were even designing our own scooter with a French engine. So I took advantage of an event at the time that was very important, the Motosprint Golden Helmet Awards. I orchestrated a meeting between Ghosn and Beggio to have Villeneuve and Rossi awarded together, so that Valentino could shake hands with Jacques. Everything was calculated down to the last detail: it was 8:30, maybe 9:00 in the evening, and we were about to take the stage at the Bologna Auditorium. The room was packed. I was seated at the table with Valentino and Uccio Salucci, his inseparable friend. Suddenly, the two of them got up, saying they needed to go to the bathroom. And they never came back. To this day, I have no idea why they did that. But it left me in an absolutely embarrassing situation—I had to go up and accept the award like an idiot. Beggio wanted to wring my neck. I seriously risked getting fired, Beggio was completely unmanageable when he lost his temper.

[indiangp]

I'm mostly joking w the KTM stuff but they're such ugly bikes good god

[fabiochampioraro]

Pernat doting his nephews Fabio e Francesco

[23mco]

Front row!!! P3 👽

Pernat: this is your home

[motocorsas]

really conflicted about these revelations concerning jorge martin's personal politics. i hope it's not too obvious that i'm a big fan of his, and have been for some time.

i remember his scandal regarding the homophobic phrase he used on El Hormiguero late last year, but he issued an apology and seems to have legitimately changed; at least, he's not publicly using bigoted language anymore. but waving a nationalist flag with ties to the spanish far right is much harder to parse. is he a fascist? is he just ignorant, and is that any better? do i renounce him and find some other favorite? it's unrealistic to expect any rider to be an unproblematic saint, but fans can still hold riders accountable by withdrawing support. but then, if i rescind my support of jorge, the question stands why i don't just quit giving money to motogp altogether, as i am very aware of the labor exploitation and enviromental damage bound up in the sport. how do we as fans decide our tolerance limit for bigotry, nationalism and ignorance, with the understanding that we're watching a straight white male dominated sport? what and who do we forgive?

this isn't the first time riders have been exposed for their unsavory beliefs. in 2014 marc marquez sold tshirts emblazoned with racist caricatures at the japanese gp. carlo pernat, who has managed enea bastianini, tony arbolino and plenty others is an openly despicable human being with a penchant for bragging about his solicitation of prostitutes.

the above quote is from a La Reppublica article which itself is pulling from statements pernat made on italian radio show La Zanzara.

there are likely plenty more cases none of us know about, like the anonymous statements published in this 2015 motorsport magazine article:

what do we do about this? the last thing we should do is remain silent and apathetic towards hatred in racing paddocks, but how do we as viewers effectively make change? these are not rhetorical questions; i don't want to support a series that is this polluted with prejudice and think we should all work to make the sport better.

[anitalianfrie]

I'd love a post about bezz's ig posts!

okay so, bez wrote two posts regarding the whole 2015 championship fiasco. or at least, two posts that survived the test of time, but since he didn't delete these two i sincerely doubt he deleted anything else.

post number one:

the text on the picture says: "on lions' corpses celebrate dogs, believing they won, but lions remain lions and dogs remain dogs" which, wild, but i've hear italian men saying this so much i was almost unfazed. (almost) somehow, the caption is worse. "I hear people talking about motorbikes like fags that talk about pussy cit Carlo Pernat Nothing else to add forza @valeyellow46"

like. 😀😀

and then, when somebody commented that he was disappointed by vale's action and that he would have never wore vale's cap again and would have tried to buy agostini's one, bez replied "ma stai zitto e compra il cappello di sto cazzo" which i cannot directly translate but can be summarized as "shut up and go fuck yourself"

the second post is more about bez fangirling post valencia:

"you are and you will remain my idol for all my life. Great @valeyellow46, super comeback, with the heart of a 15 years old boy as always! You're great, really great!"

[batsplat]

'From the first time I worked with Valentino I realised he is so, so curious. He wants to know everything: why is this exhaust pipe like this, why is that exhaust like that, why does the rider do that, why do other riders do something different? In fact, when he was 14 or 15 another of Graziano's friends, Marco Lucchinelli [1981 500cc world champion], used to call him Virus. This was his nickname for a few years, because he wanted to know everything and he was always attacking people with questions. This is Valentino - curious and intelligent. Racing with him was a beautiful period in my life because he was very easy to work with. For me the impressive thing about him was his riding, but also that he was very friendly. "After Brno 1996 I immediately thought that he was a phenomenon, not only a phenomenon with his riding but a phenomenon in communication. He has all the characteristics: he is a fantastic rider, he is friendly, he is spontaneous, he's not fake, and he smiles with everybody, so all the grandmothers, the grandfathers, the wives and the kids fall in love with him - the people who know nothing about engines and racing. He had a big effect on Aprilia sales. We sold a lot of bikes and scooters and we made a lot of Valentino replica machines. "During that period Valentino sometimes fucked with me. In 1997 he was a big fan of Jacques Villeneuve [winner of that year's Formula 1 title with Williams-Renault]. He kept telling me, 'Carlo, I want to meet Villeneuve!' He was such a fan that he hated Ferrari at that time, because of the Villeneuve versus Michael Schumacher thing. So I called Carlos Ghosn at Renault, who I knew because at that time Aprilia was doing good business selling scooters in Renault dealerships. It was arranged that Valentino would meet Jacques at a big motorsport awards event in Bologna. "Before the event I went out for dinner with Valentino and Uccio Salucci. At the end of the meal Valentino went to the toilet. And he never came back! In the auditorium there was Jacques with his car and there was Valentino's bike, but no Valentino. All the world's TV and media were there, so Beggio was very angry and wanted to kill me. I still don't know where he went that night. He won't tell me!"

Carlo Pernat in Oxley's 'Valentino Rossi: All His Races'

valentino with villeneuve in 1998

[unhinged-motogp-confessions]

Reblog to kill Carlo pernat for putting enea on a KTM

.

[carformula1]

Jack Miller’s season ranked lowest of every MotoGP rider’s by a paddock veteran | MotoGP Miller’s first season at KTM included a... #usa #uk #ireland

[kwisatzworld]

“The other thing that takes a lot of time is the girls! There are always a lot of girls at every Grand Prix, but a lot of really young girl fans come to see me in Italy, 12 and 13-year-olds. I prefer older girls who are real fans of me as a racer – not teeny-boppers.” (Italian GP 1998)

“I have to say I don’t like leaving home to go racing at this time of year - there are too many beautiful girls around where I live, and they don’t wear so many clothes during the summer.” (British GP 1998)

Even back in his 125 and 250 days his infectious enthusiasm was breaking the sport to whole new audiences, amongst them the Valenteenyboppers, gangs of Italian schoolgirls drawn to racetracks by their heartthrob's pretty blue eyes. Valentino doesn't appreciate that kind of attention because he's a bit of a biking purist. “They're not fans of Rossi the motorcycle racer, but just because I've got blue eyes, I don't like,” he says with faint exasperation after years spent fleeing these seething ranks of moist, pubescent Latin lovelies. “It's good to have one or two nice girls chasing you, but not one thousand.” That's what he says, but you wonder if he really means it once you've been inside his motorhome, watching him and constant companion Uccio Salucci giggling madly as they field lewd text messages from female admirers.

Mat Oxley: It was Imola ‘97 that I realised he’d become a superstar – his fans covered half the hillside on the pit straight, so he was already more popular than Doohan and Biaggi. You’d go to his motorhome and there’d be 20 teenage girls hanging around outside, even though he had a girlfriend at the time. Uccio: We really enjoyed having so many girls around! Maybe some top riders or superstars worry “Is this girl coming to see me because I’m famous or does she really like me?”, but Valentino didn’t think like that, he always said “I don’t care why she’s coming, I’m just happy that she is coming!”

Of course, with the late nights came the girls, and Valentino was getting through them at a rate. One of the few big-name riders to count himself ‘single’, he had finally copped onto the fact that he’s young, rich and the ladies love him, so, why on earth would he want to go steady just yet? As Italian MotoGP mover and shaker Carlo Pernat says: “I've never seen so many girls around a rider, maybe Barry Sheene or Marco Lucchinelli (500 world champ in 1981) but never so many. Valentino doesn't like to stay with a girl more than two or three months. He still lives like a kid now, with the same friends, the same way of life. After the racing is finished it's impossible to find him, no one knows where he goes, maybe he's in London, maybe he's in a disco with some friends he's known since he was a boy. He never changes, he doesn't want to be famous, he doesn't want a movie star girlfriend, he doesn't want to be in the papers with famous people.”

Valentino excuses himself by insisting that long-term girlfriends don't fit the GP lifestyle. “I brought a girlfriend to the Barcelona race but now is finished,” he said midway through 2003. When you make this life is very difficult to have a girl. If you bring her to a GP maybe she's bored, so I stay alone at races, is better. Then when you stay one week at a racetrack, you come back home and you have some power to use, you need to have fun, go out with friends, go to the disco, but your girlfriend has just stayed one week doing all this kind of stuff, so when I come home, she say ‘can we see a movie?'. So is difficult.”

Q: Did the life of a boyfriend change him? Graziano: I don't think so, he keeps going dancing, but with his girlfriend.

Who would the MotoGP rider Valentino Rossi invite at dinner from the sports world? The Italian answered this question in an interview with Blick. “That's where I would call Roger Federer. We already had this pleasure in Portugal in 2006, but it was a long time ago. I do not know Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi on a personal basis, even if I would be interested at those two. Outside the world of sports, I would prefer a beautiful woman! When I was younger, I was loving the actress Angelina Jolie so much. But now she is old, like me (laughter). So I'd pick Scarlett Johansson. Having a nice woman next to me would be better than Roger!”, he said laughing.

“The first ride with the M1 was like going on a date with a new girlfriend: it's more exciting than having ice cream with a new girlfriend than having sex with one you've been dating for years!”

[bikerspiritmagazine]

Carlo Pernat: “Ο Puig θα έπρεπε να λάβει υπόψη του τα αποτελέσματα του Fabio Di Giannantonio, αλλά δεν του αρέσουν οι Ιταλοί”

Αυτή τη στιγμή η μόνη κ��νή θέση στο grid για το 2024 είναι στη Repsol Honda, και υπάρχουν πολλά σενάρια για την κάλυψη της! Continue reading Untitled

[coimbrabertone]

So, since writing this blog, Carlo Pernat - Enea Bastianini's manager - has revealed that Enea while ride a factory spec KTM at Tech3 Racing next year. The article that broke the news yesterday also hinted that KTM is considering rebranding Tech3 from Red Bull GasGas Tech3 to another brand within the Pierer Mobility Group umbrella.

Now, at first I thought this was going to be like Husqvarna or back to just running the second team as KTMs as well, but then a thought occurred to me.

Earlier this year, Pierer Mobility Group (I'll refer to them as KTM from here on out) increased their stake in MV Agusta from 25% to a controlling 50.1% interest. MV Agusta has a ton of history in MotoGP, particularly in the 60s and 70s with the great Giacomo Agostini. I'm not an insider, I don't know anything other than what I read in the MotoGP news, but the stars line up for me on this.

It makes an awful lot more sense to market an Italian sports bike brand in MotoGP than a Spanish (or Swedish in the case of Husqvarna) dirt bike brand, and if the new lead rider for Tech3 is going to be the Italian Enea Bastianini, then it lines up even better.

Also, with Jorge Martin gone, Enea Bastianini gone, and Marc Marquez to the factory, a lot of people in the paddock seem to think that this kills Ducati's chance to keep Pramac.

I'm not quite convinced yet, since a Pramac rider is leading the championship on a Ducati while the two Yamahas are 13th and 20th in the standings, respectively. I know Yamaha is said to be offering generous terms, but is that worth going from the manufacturer with 241 constructors' points to the one with 36?

We'll see what happens, but Ducati doesn't have a top rider to offer Pramac anymore, and that certainly doesn't help.

Perhaps Marco Bezzecchi's struggles on the 2023 Ducati this year will make him more receptive to being on a 2025 Ducati at Pramac next year, but he's already rejected Pramac once, so that's hardly a guarantee.

So silly season continues, and now that the main rider dominos have fallen in place, the biggest question isn't about rider moves anymore, but rather does Pramac stay or go? Once we know that, then the rest of the rider market can fall into place.

MotoGP Silly Season Predictions - Plus Larson Waiver Talk.

As recently as this morning, I was planning on this week's blogpost being about the Kyle Larson waiver situation over in NASCAR, however, MotoGP then decided to do everything all at once and launched silly season into high gear.

So, with regards to Larson, I'll just say one thing: he raced in the Indianapolis 500 competitively and made NASCAR look good mere years after Jimmie Johnson, unfortunately, struggled in a Chip Ganassi Indycar on road and street circuits - and there were a lot of jokes at NASCAR's expense after their seven-time world champion spun out every race. So how does NASCAR repay him? Utter silence over whether or not he'll get a playoff waiver.

Kyle Larson is the 2021 champion, took his car to the owner's championship final four as a result of playoff shenanigans in 2022, and then made the final four in 2023 again. He is considered one of the top talents in NASCAR and he has the results to back it up. So why is there controversy over him getting a playoff waiver for this year?

Because Kyle Larson prioritized the Indianapolis 500 last weekend.

I talked about this in my Motorsports Christmas blogpost, but the Indy 500 was rain delayed and Kyle Larson stayed there to compete, and only then he flew out to Charlotte. Now, Kyle Larson landed, was ready to get into the car, but then it started raining in Charlotte too. Just before midnight, as the track was drying, NASCAR controversially decided to call the race, thus Kyle Larson was not able to relieve Justin Allgaier in the #5 and resume the rest of the Coke 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

NASCAR is mad because every other weekend of the year, they're the biggest show in racing, they can throw their weight around and try to chase NFL ratings while all other racing series are considered a niche. That's true every weekend except Memorial Day weekend, when the Indianapolis 500 reigns supreme. The whole existence of the Charlotte 600 is to compete with Indy.

Larson prioritized the bigger race and that made NASCAR made, because they're used to getting their egos stroked.

Larson is one of the best drivers in NASCAR and the double attempt brought good publicity to both sports. He had already won his way into the playoffs and made an effort to get to Charlotte for the end of the 600 - give him a waiver. If not, well, you face the possibility that Austin Cindric is in the playoffs after his shock win at Iowa, and one of the top drivers in the series isn't.

I like Austin, I'm glad he won, but he's nowhere near the same level as Kyle Larson. If he can compete for the championship and Kyle can't, then it makes the NASCAR playoffs look even less legitimate than they already are.

Anyway, that turned into a longer rant than I intended, so I'll leave it there. Now onto the main topic for today: MotoGP silly season.

Yesterday at Mugello, Enea Bastianini spent the final laps of the race charging from fourth to second, overtaking Marc Marquez for third and then pulling off an audacious last corner pass on Jorge Martin for second. This meant that Enea finished just eight tenths off leader Pecco Bagnaia for a factory Ducati 1-2.

So naturally, Ducati has decided to replace him.

Marc Marquez, who finished four and last out of these three, is going to the Ducati Lenovo Team, according to Autosport.

This was all but confirmed when, a few hours later, Aprilia confirmed the signing of Jorge Martin for Aprilia. Jorge Martin who finished third and got overtaken by Enea Bastianini in the final corner, mind you.

Now, of course, Ducati is not judging this off of one race alone and I acknowledge - as I did in two recent blogposts - that Enea has had a rotten time on the factory Ducati seat. That being said, seeing him lose Ducati to Marc Marquez, who finished last of the main three, and then lose out on the Aprilia seat to the guy he overtook in the final corner. It stings.

That being said, some news out of this weekend might offer a possibility for Enea to have a bit of a soft landing from the factory seat anyway. Let me explain:

Earlier in this weekend, Marc Marquez spelled out his demands in an interview. He said that he was not interested in going to Pramac, saying that he didn't want to switch from a satellite team (he's currently riding a 2023 Ducati at Gresini Racing) to another satellite team (Pramac runs 2024 Ducatis, same as the factory team, with factory contracted riders, they are still customers, however). Instead, Marquez said that the best option was a factory team, and if not that, then a factory bike at minimum.

Translation: Marc Marquez wanted the factory team for 2025, and if he couldn't get that, then he wanted a 2025 Ducati at Gresini, remaining at his current team.

In response, Gino Borsoi, who is the team manager at Pramac, insisted that his team had a contract for two factory-spec Ducati GP25s next year. This was somewhat of a surprise for a number of reasons, one: Ducati announced late last year that they signed Moto2 rider Fermin Aldeguer for 2025, and it seemed like the natural landing spot for him was going to be Pramac...until it emerged later on that Ducati wanted to start Fermin out on a 2024 bike. Two: regardless of which spec Ducati Fermin is going to be on, Pramac has been heavily linked to Yamaha lately.

The Japanese bikes are struggling in MotoGP right now and, ever since RNF switched to satellite Aprilias for 2023, Yamaha has not had a satellite team. Four bikes capturing data instead of two could really help Yamaha right now, so they've been linked to pretty much every Ducati satellite team the last few months. VR46 with the romanticism of a Valentino Rossi and Yamaha reunion, Gresini until they renewed their deal, and most recently, with Pramac.

Yamaha was desperate and the rumor has been that they offered very generous terms to Pramac.

So, the news that Pramac may stay with Ducati after all is a shock to the media, but it does not seem to have been much of a shock to Ducati. Ducati had been working on a way to keep both Martin and Marquez, and it seems that they wanted to offer Pramac the chance to run MotoGP's biggest star - Marc Marquez - as a reason to stay...and potentially a reason to accept taking on a rookie Aldeguer on a year-old bike as well.

Now that Marquez is going to the factory team instead and Jorge Martin has snatched the open Aprilia seat, I see an opening. Ducati can send Enea Bastianini to Pramac, keeping him on a factory spec bike while giving Pramac another frontrunning rider. Aldeguer joins as Bastianini's teammate, on a GP25 if that's what it takes to keep Pramac in the fold, because Marc Marquez will be in the factory team so freeing up a GP25 won't be as important.

What about VR46 and Gresini then? Well, I think Marco Bezzecchi's current season has been a bit of a disaster, so he won't really have much of a chance to get a factory ride next year, so staying at VR46 seems likely. Furthermore, his struggles mean that Bezzecchi probably isn't going to have much luck demanding Ducati gives him a GP25, so status quo is probably the most likely outcome there. It's unfortunate for Bezzecchi, but the sheer reality is that, with all these hot riders on the market, his options seem to be either stay at VR46, or make a more or less lateral move to Trackhouse Aprilia.

Then Franco Morbidelli, another Valentino Rossi academy product, can drop from Pramac into the other VR46 seat.

Where does Fabio DiGiannantonio go then? Well, with Marquez going to the factory, Fabio can now return to Gresini and be reunited with Frankie Carchedi. Thus, restoring the 2023 lineup of Fabio DiGiannantonio and Alex Marquez.

So, to sum things up, I think Ducati can keep all three of its satellite teams and all eight bikes like this:

Ducati Lenovo (GP25): Pecco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez.

Pramac (GP25): Enea Bastianini and Fermin Aldeguer.

VR46 (GP24): Marco Bezzecchi and Franco Morbidelli.

Gresini (GP24): Fabio DiGiannantonio and Alex Marquez.

Maybe Pramac will go to Yamaha after all, maybe my predictions will look radically wrong in a few weeks. I don't know how it'll turn out, but this is the scheme I've thought up in my mind.

I need to do something since with Marc Marquez at Ducati and Jorge Martin at Aprilia, my two favorite teams now have my two least favorite riders and I'm trying not to dwell on that part.

So yeah.

Oh, also this weekend Indycar raced at Detroit, but uhh...the less said about that, the better.

[fabiochampioraro]

Carlo Pernat aka grid grandpa

[anitalianfrie]

Insulting Carlo pernat on the Internet is not enough I need a gun and his exact location

[batsplat]

Halfway through his rookie GP season Valentino hadn't climbed a podium. He had come close - at Jerez and Mugello - but his next four races didn't go so well: crashes at Paul Ricard and Assen, a mechanical at Donington and a fifth at the Nuerburgring. However, Aprilia's Carlo Pernat had put his job on the line when he signed Vale, so he needed him to succeed. In August, Scuderia Carrizosa received boxes of factory-spec engine and chassis parts. The difference was immediate. At Austria's A1-Ring he finished third, 2.3 seconds behind the winner. He was still buzzing from his first trip to the podium (but no champagne for 16-year-olds) when his mother drove their campervan into the Brno paddock a few days later. On the Saturday he scored his first pole position, but he still wasn't fully confident. "I didn't expect to win the race but I was beginning to arrive in a good place, so I knew something was possible." The early laps were typical 125cc harem-scarem stuff, Stefano Perugini and the rest rubbing elbows and paint. On lap five Vale scrapped his way in to the lead but not for long. Jorge Martinez - the man Vale had brought down at Shah Alam - was on the charge. The veteran swept past and tried to make the break. Only Valentino went with him, starting a vicious duel with three laps to go. "The race turned into a big braking battle - who could brake the deepest, because Martinez was always the rider who could brake latest," Vale remembers. "After my win he gave me his hand and said, 'Fuck, you were strong!'." By then Martinez had a grudging respect for Vale, half his age. "At that time Valentino was a very, very aggressive rider, says the Spaniard. "He was very fast but also he had many crashes. Over the years in MotoGP we have seen many riders arrive who are very fast but also crash very much, like Marc Márquez. So we ask the question, will this new guy continue to be very fast but still crash too often, or will he change his mentality and concentrate more? "Around this time Valentino made this change, so in 1997 he won many races and hardly crashed at all. Also his character at this time was very different to most riders - the crazy hair and the victory celebrations - so he completely changed the mentality of the paddock." Valentino's lifelong right-hand man Uccio Salucci will never forget Brno 1996. "It was a fantastic weekend," he says. "During this period racing was a complete joke for us - we didn't understand how everything worked. On the Sunday evening we stayed in our camper and drank some beer with our parents. The next day Stefania [Rossi's mother] drove the camper and we went home to Tavullia feeling very, very happy."

^Rossi leads Martinez and Emilio Alzamora at Brno. Two decades later Vale was still fighting with Alzamora, who had become Marc Márquez's manager and mentor.

From Mat Oxley's 'Valentino Rossi: All His Races'

"I saw a young guy with dyed hair and earrings who was like Superman on the bike. I thought to myself: 'That's not for me.' At first it was a shock. In 1996 we had already clashed a few times. He touched me once, we had an argument. In 1997 Valentino Rossi made me retire. But that's not a bad story for me." "I had two reasons: one was that Valentino Rossi came and that had such a big impact. The other was that the manufacturers, in this case Aprilia, used me as an experienced rider as a technical test rider to get the bike right and then they gave the best material to Valentino. As a rider, that hurt me at the time. Later I regretted retiring because in 1998 Sakata won the title that I could have won. As a team boss, I suffered for the first two or three years after retiring because I wanted to jump on a bike and compete with my riders. That was difficult for me."

- Jorge Martinez (x)

We were a good team. And we had a lot of fun in that 1996 season. Or rather, I had a lot of fun. That was me at my craziest. I really was an absolute pest. I had no respect for anyone on the track. To me they were all the same, it made no difference if it was a veteran vying for the title, or a debutant like me. I just wanted to go fast, very fast, and if I saw an opening, I went for it. I wanted to overtake everyone, come what may. In other words, I made people uncomfortable. I was fast, but I made mistakes. Too many times I threw away decent positions. I think I must have fallen fifteen or so times that season. In the very first race, I got into an argument with Jorge Martinez. We were at Shah Alam in Malaysia. I was making my debut and had secured a spot in the third row. I started very well and I'm not sure how, but I somehow found myself alongside the leaders early on. I was cruising along somewhere between seventh and eighth position. At one point, Dirk Raudies was in front of me and Martinez just behind me. Raudies' engine seized up, and, to avoid him, I instinctively braked, changing trajectory. Martinez was unable to avoid me, hit me, and fell. That was the year in which Martinez, riding the "official" Aprilia, was heavily favoured in the race for the title. I had just upset one of the darlings, one of the "untouchables" of the world championship. I finished the race in sixth place and was quite pleased. In fact, everyone around me was pleased, we were all celebrating. Then, suddenly, I came face to face with Martinez and Angel Nieto. "Son of a bitch!" they shouted. "We're going to tear you a new arsehole!" That's when I realised they probably did not like me very much. So I slipped behind the mechanic, who was a big guy, using him as a shield. The two Spaniards were rabid, they looked as if they wanted to beat me up, so the big mechanic did come in very handy, as a deterrent. But I soon started enjoying the scene, rather than being frightened. The pair of them were absolutely furious, but they also looked so funny, in the way that only short people can look funny when they get really angry. And both of them were tiny, unintimidating in every way. I was not really worried at all.

Valentino Rossi in his 2005 autobiography, What if I had never tried it

he went on to beat jorge martinez for his first ever race win - from the rec list: