#i have a spreadsheet that tracks how the way casey refers to valentino changes over the course of the autobiography. tough luck casey

[batsplat]

hi! I was wondering, which race was “that was really fun and you seemed normal” from?

(text posts here) qatar 2006!! casey's second race in the premier class and his first on-track confrontation with valentino (unless you count casey soaring through the gap left by toni elias sending valentino to the shadow realm at the first corner of jerez). he got pole - valentino nicely complimentary about the rookie's performance - after a very stressful time getting to the track. illness and flight problems, very casey experience. in the race valentino was soon on his tail, chasing him down for the lead and eventually passing him. casey sickly wee rookie gradually slipped down the field to finish fifth, while valentino won. and valentino came up to casey after that to do the grabby hands thing, of course. it was really fun AND valentino seemed normal !!

(relevant autobiography excerpts here, more lovingly collected screenshots of this historic handshake here. if you want more on the stuff covered by this post in general, see here)

some more context worth including. first off, here's valentino and casey after the next race at turkey, which casey ALMOST won - passed on the last lap - and where valentino was fourth. once again vale comes up to casey to congratulate casey for his first podium:

in total, valentino passed casey six times in race situations in 2006 (or at least that's what it says in my notes). qatar, shanghai, catalunya, donington, and twice in phillip island (flag to flag race). this isn't just me collecting detailed to the point of useless trivia info about the rivalry, there's some potentially relevant insight to be gleaned here. casey writes in his autobiography that he thought valentino made some passes he wasn't a fan of in both races and practise in 2006 - and that this has made him a tad wary of valentino already. now, if I had to guess I'd say there's a little bit of retconning going on here and casey is overstating his level of scepticism towards valentino going into 2007, but equally I can imagine casey was annoyed by valentino at least a couple times on the track in 2006. I can also imagine valentino did do a wee bit of light hazing of the cute rookie by being a bit of a dick to him on the track when the opportunity presented itself, in particular in practice. however. of course it's hard to judge an overtake perfectly from watching it on a screen (especially if you have to judge by casey standards), but I really struggle to see how casey could have any problem with qatar. my personal guess is that donington is the offending race, where valentino does run casey pretty wide. the other candidate is phillip island - but since one of valentino's passes there WAS controversial for non-being-a-dick reasons, I've always felt casey would be specific in bringing that one up if he'd had a problem with it

and all that being said, little casey's brain was also cooking up valencia 2006 conspiracy theories to explain how valentino had been SABOTAGED - and said a few years ago that after 2006 he was so impressed he'd felt vale was basically unbeatable. plus, obviously he still needed to feel warmly enough about valentino headed into 2007 that he could go around looking for head pats at qatar - it's not possible for casey to become disillusioned with valentino if he was never... not that. so yeah, that's what the text post is referring to: casey and vale's first on-track fight, casey's first big success in the premier class with his pole position, young casey being pretty hype in his own understated way about being at the sharp end of the field with valentino. cute. I'm sure casey's right and valentino's definitely normal. it'll be fine