IN AN exclusive interview with roadracerx.com MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi has said his Honda RC211 V5 MotoGP bike, which took the Italian to the 2003 and 2004 championships, was 'a missile'.
Asked about his time at Honda, and in particular the company's awesome 250bhp 990cc V5 racer, Rossi replied:
"For sure, the V5 was incredible! They’d made a bike that definitely made a difference.
"On my bike, the frame was also very good; I never had problems with setup. That as a bike that was easy to set up—very intuitive.
"The motor was a missile, sure, but it was a very nice bike to ride; you rarely crashed, you could slide it, it was trustworthy. Then in 2007 they wanted a super-advanced bike, but instead they had problems," Rossi said of the downturn in Honda's MotoGP success over the last few years.
Asked why he thinks Honda are now struggling to win races, The Italian states:
"Probably the riders aren’t precise enough in saying what’s needed to improve, but I don’t know how things work now at Honda.
"It depends whether or not someone gives you the right directions. The Honda is very fast, but it has some setup problems, and the two riders, who aren’t a couple of idiots, sometimes have problems. They can’t ride like they’d like to. Last year, Dovizioso had at least four or five races in which he didn’t seem to be able to do his best."
On his defection to Yamaha, a move that infuriated Honda, Rossi admits the initial move was a great success, as well as a surprise to many, but things took a turn for the worse in 2006, when Rossi lost the MotoGP title to Nicky Hayden, followed by Casey Stoner in '07:
"I have to say that I’ve seen some dark situations in 2006 and 2007, but there’s been improvement since then.
"It seemed to me that there was no longer the aggressiveness and the desire to improve that there had been in 2003, 2004, and 2005. If the bike doesn’t work well for two years in a row, things start to look dark….
"But from there—and not by accident—they (Yamaha) put their heads down, they reorganised everything, they reasoned about what didn’t work, and they came out with a standard-setting bike.
And on the success of the cross-plane crank Yamaha M1 - technology now seen on today's Yamaha M1 road bike, Rossi enthused:
"When [Yamaha technology boss Masao] Furusawa, years ago, said that an inline four is the motor that could win, everyone said, “What the heck is he saying? What does he expect to do with that thing that looks like a production engine, and that has a backward-rotating crankshaft? But he was right—he was really right."
And on the much-hyped move to Ducati for the closing years of his MotoGP career, the nine-time world champ said:
"To change, you have to think you’re going to a place that’s better, and for me it’s difficult to think that there’s a place where I could be happier than at Yamaha. It would be nice to change because, for example, Ducati is an Italian brand and the fans would be happy, but in the end, you can’t make these decisions just for emotional reasons. You also have to consider that you’ll have to work.
"So, we'll see..."
