Mugello Review: The Italian Job

When I first went to Mugello I had to follow the signs to the 'Autodromo', as anything as easy as buying a map would be far too organised.

I went through the small town of Scarperia before being directed right down a small lane that a big van would have no chance of negotiating. 'Can't be right ... the locals have played a game with the signs,' I thought.

The road goes through someone's allotment before up and over another small rise where the road has had its own small cutting made through a coppice of oaks and sycamores. My little Corsa hire car wheezed away through the narrow gap between the trees before its driver had an accident.

The view that hits you as you approach the circuit is breathtaking. The deep green of Tuscan early summer grass countering the yellow and red kerbing that borders the 3.25 mile track was the first thing that hit me.

The Mugello circuit © DPPI

Ferrari got hold of it in the late 80s and revamped it with a pit building that still is up to spec two decades later, while the circuit gained bigger run-offs and a lawn mower - some pictures from those early races there have got great expanses of grass two feet high as run-off. Really agricultural ...

Nowadays, the same small road is still a major access point to the circuit from Scarperia, but alterations through the small cutting have been made. A big fence has been erected to stop people watching from the road, but it doesn't stop me remembering that magic feeling I had the first time I saw the place.

Mugello has that balance of Italian life - respect of the history and the past, while introducing contemporary things in order to keep up with an ever-changing world.

The peak of 'Italianess' at Mugello last weekend was on the cooling down lap when Valentino Rossi crossed the line, winning for the sixth time in a row in the big class there. No-one else has ever won a four-stroke MotoGP race there. It was an incredible spectacle.

Just as the last finishers crossed the line, a sea of yellow caps, banners and flags swamped the track as security guards cordoned off an area around parc ferme. This is a friendly invasion rather than the mob-handed, drunk invasions of other circuits. When the security guards say no, the fans stand back rather than leap over them, fists flying.

Rossi was still on his cooling down lap, having stopped up in front of his fans at the Poggio Seco corner, when a fan tried to rip his visor off by yanking the whole thing backwards. It's every man for himself out there. A few years back Norick Abe even had to fight off people trying to remove his helmet, with it still attached to his head ...

The fence opposite the commentary box is 15 foot high, but the yellow shirts and tricolore flags are scaling them like they've been in prison for twenty years. This is their break for freedom.

Eventually Rossi's FIAT Yamaha made it back to pitlane through the short cut at the Savelli corner, burbling up with one of his fan club on the back of the bike. He stopped right underneath the box with his Italian Yamaha data engineer right in front of him, arms aloft.

But as soon as he stopped, they were on him like a pack of lions onto a gazelle. He had no chance. Soon he was swamped with fans, overcome with desperation just to even touch his leathers, the bike, anything.

People from Yamaha, circuit security, IRTA, Dorna soon ran to his help, but Valentino was not stressing too much. Well, not until a third person tried to get on his bike.

Valentino Rossi is mobbed as he enters the pits after his victory © Toby Moody

Soon he was in parc ferme, where Pedrosa had already been for a while, but no-one noticed. Rossi hugged his mechanics and the celebrations began.

This is where my entire Mugello weekend fell into place. The lack of sleep, the losing of a wallet on the start of race day (fortunately found), the thick head after a bit too much red on Wednesday night evaporated in a matter of seconds.

How? Because the commentary box at Mugello has got a window that you can open and stick the headset out of. Not that I actually needed to take it off, as the din filled the entire booth.

I leaned out and took some pictures. I was not going to let this one fade into the depths of the memory. I'm going to look back on these pictures in 30 years time, enjoying them just as much as the day itself.

And that included seeing a 'limousine' Vespa with six people on it; the dodgy welding beginning to cry 'enough' under the weight of them. The Rossi replica Honda 600 with a megaphone exhaust rammed into the pipe made a return from last year, but the winners have to be the girls on a Piaggio Ape three wheeler, hand-painted in FIAT Yamaha colours.

Whoever thought of putting a window in a room that is supposed to be sealed off from the outside world is a genius. None of the booths at the other seventeen circuits have the capability to have their windows opened, but then, none of the other circuits have a post-race celebration like Mugello's.

I thought that the post-race celebrations two years ago were never to be beaten, but last Sunday topped them. Rossi's eighth victory at the track in twelve visits seemed to be magnified, for the crowd just knew how much the first part of this season has hurt him.

Beaten at four of the previous five tracks in 2007 by Casey Stoner, someone whom he didn't have on the radar, prompted Valentino to have a great big heart on his helmet for the race.

I caught up with Aldo Drudi on Saturday night, the legendary helmet designer who very close to Rossi, and he had burnt the midnight oil getting two helmets done for Mugello after the decision was only made late on the previous Monday to go with a new design.

"He wanted to show that his heart is in motorcycling. He loves it. Still he loves it after 12 years," said Drudi.

"You know, he's had a load of criticism from the Italian press recently as they thought his heart wasn't in it anymore. Too much money, no fight inside his belly, all that kind of talk. He really took that badly, so he wanted to show that him racing out there was for the fans."

Rossi was so happy to win that he threw his helmet in the crowd from the podium - and he doesn't give many helmets away. Someone, somewhere has got a hell of a trophy.

Alex Barros (D'Antin Ducati) holds off the factory Ducati of Casey Stoner to take third in the Italian Grand Prix © DPPI

I've been in the midst of Ferrari celebrations a few miles up the road at Monza when there's been one on the podium. I swear my feet didn't touch the ground for ten minutes as I was swept up in the thick of it, but Mugello and Rossimania was just another level.

I'm going to have to go a long way in the next 11.5 months to feel that kind of emotion again. Maybe not though, as MotoGP gives us such a thrill to watch and such variety, with seven different winners from the last ten races. Magic statistics. Just magic.

The season gets better and better, and we've only done race six of eighteen.

Ducati were supposed to win in Italy, and they didn't. I really thought that the days of bad decisions were behind them, but they dropped the ball on Sunday.

Stoner took a hard tyre, while Barros took a soft tyre. Hell, if it had not got so hot on Sunday afternoon, Barros may well have been fighting for second place rather than third; a place that could well have been Stoner's.

Ducati have been going around the place on that bike for 13 months, but in the end Rossi's genius and Pedrosa's bloody-mindedness got them ahead.

Ducati bosses, including one who was there for the very first time, were a bit non-plussed. Mind you, it suited Ducati to have Barros and Hofmann taking two points from Rossi in Turkey, and Hofmann again taking another from the Italian in Le Mans, leaving the three Barros took away from Stoner in Mugello as a 'neutral moment' in the title chase.

However, Ducati cannot afford to give away any points against Rossi on a roll. Just let's remind ourselves that Rossi took 12 points from Stoner on Sunday, more than half of his championship lead at the start of the day.

Barros later said that he was told to go for it from the beginning of the season by the Ducati bosses.

"Ducati have always said you can race to the flag," said the Brazilian.

"They said it clear to me at the start of the season. They said, 'Alex, the team give you the bike to you to do the best you can. No worries about anything else.' They told me clear like this.

That'll have changed ...

Mind you, at least the guy got out there and raced his backside off. No team orders, no ship to shore radio, not politics out there on the race track.

D'Antin beat the works team fair and square on Sunday, and that's fair game rather than the fallout after the Monaco Grand Prix when it seemed to me that Hamilton had the faster car, but was told to hold station.

I'll bet the Spanish press didn't complain about the team orders at McLaren, and nor will the Spanish press supporting D'Antin's third position at Mugello.

What I do know that people in Spain will be complaining about is Lorenzo's sour grapes after falling off during the last lap in the 250cc race.

He left the door open, and Bautista was past him when the red Aprilia decided to close in, and ultimately fell. Thank goodness the protest from Lorenzo's team against Bautista was thrown out by race directors on Sunday night.

The championship would fall apart if that one was held up. This is racing, not flower arranging. Five years ago an incident such as that would not even have warranted the thought of a protest, never mind the motions of one. Well done race directors for chucking that one in the bin.