You can’t sleep in Mugello!” this is what they say.. and I would add: you can’t sleep neither before, for the adrenaline, nor after, for the anger after the race. Mugello always leaves the mark.
Since ever, as it is the first italian race of the season, it is an important event for all the italian teams. After the “pass war”, people asking for P1, friends calling like “Hi, it’s so long I don’t here from you, do you need any accreditation? If it’s possible a backstage pass, with the access on the stage” as a song of the italian singer Fedez sais, on Friday the engines are powered on and immediately we are protagonists. The scene is ours, you can see our names on the left, at the top of the tv and a big amount of red helmets is lightening the screen. We don’t miss anything, neither two slides and a brutal crash for Antonelli, which scared us becausa he was taken away by the stretcher. On Saturday our “giappo-riccionese” misses the pole for 1 tenth. Antonelli instead, victim of his own ego, ruins the last five minutes of qualifying and closes 7th. It’s a long time we’re discussing it: he doesn’t need any slipstream. To justify his greediness he sais he didn’t mean to do just the pole, but he wanted to close the lap with a low 56. But first you have to make the pole, and only after you can pretend to do even better. On the other hand Tatsu makes us thrilled and proud of his first first-row in the world championship; this time our marathon to the park fermè isn’t vain as in Le Mans, instead it makes us enthusiastic and happy as when you are a kid running to win the game.
They both had a great pace, and that made us thinking of a good Sunday, the expectations were high.
But then… Antonelli doesn’t start in the best way and at the second corner is involved in an accident but luckily he can stand on his bike. He finds himself in the last positions but he pushes and fights so hard to gain every lap more and more positions while i was admiring him from the box. Just him and few more riders were able to complete a lap in less than 1’57’’ but the infinite straight of the tuscan circuit impedes him from making the difference. Nicco deserves my applause, I have no critics, he demonstrates he’s great closing 9th with a huge and crazy come back. About the accident there is nothing to say, each one tries to do his own race, his own trajectories, trys to go fast and then it’s like in the Monopoly game, you pick up a card and everythink changes. This is how races are.
Tatsuki on Sunday isn’t able to perform at his best. Everything starts from the warm up: I always reccomand not to push, crashing an hour before the race is never good for the mentality of the rider and it’s a huge amount of work for the mechanics. But those are just words to the wind: he crashes, making this Sunday even more dark. Suzuki grew up so much since he started riding with us, he became protagonist of this world, but if you want it, you have to do it till the very end. This is a job that gives you a lot if you hit the target, it’s growing together, running everyday together to catch something, gaining tenths and cents to get to… I’m frustrated because on Sunday he didn’t give his best, disappointing my expectations and his the ones of his mechanics, which were working hard from Tuesday for him. This makes me so angry so i’m not saying anything more. I almost ran away from Mugello and I’m sorry for getting caught up by the situation, for not saying goodbye to everyone. I’m glad to have spent a whole weekend with sponsors, friends and sponsor-friends, a weekend I hoped to close better, but anyway we did our best in the hospitality, trying to make everyone feeling home, as they were whatching the race from the home sofa… with some actors walking besides!
-PaoloSic58-