Jerez MotoGP Reaction: Valentino Rossi scores 100th podium

Valentino Rossi created another slice of history for himself in Jerez today after the Italian’s first top three finish for Bridgestone gave him his 100th premier class podium.

His second place though behind a dominant Dani Pedrosa extended his barren victory run to six races, which his longest run without a win since his rookie campaign in 2000.

Once Rossi had passed Nicky Hayden on three and Fiat Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo a lap later, he could do nothing about runaway leader Pedrosa, who was easing to his fifth MotoGP victory to the delight of 131,000 home fans.

Rossi, who actually miscalculated the number of laps and actually started to slow down when he was actually on the last lap, giving Lorenzo a sniff of second.

The Italian said: “I’m really happy with this podium because, even though it hasn’t been so many races since the last one, it’s been quite a lot of months!

”I am also very happy to have reached 100 podiums in MotoGP; now I am wondering if I can get to 200!

”It’s a pity we couldn’t win today and maybe I was a little bit too cautious at the start because I wanted to take care of my tyres, but in the end they worked very well from start to finish and so this is great for the future.

”It’s always better to win but after the poor result in Qatar this is a very important second place to us, also because it’s my first podium with Bridgestone. We’re third in the championship with a very long way to go and I’m feeling quite confident.”

Rossi’s factory Yamaha team boss Davide Brivio said: “We are very satisfied with today’s result, especially because this second place arrives after Qatar, where we learnt a lot.

Now we want to look at this race in Jerez as the start of our championship.

Of course we still have a lot to learn about the Bridgestone/Yamaha combination, but I think both parties did an excellent job here and Valentino rode a great race and kept a very consistent rhythm.

This is Valentino’s 100th podium and also the first one with Bridgestone, so it’s a special day, but we hope that there will be many others.”