Valentino Rossi explains Marco Simoncelli tribute helmet

Valentino Rossi has explained his personal tribute to close friend Marco Simoncelli on his AGV helmet in Valencia today.

Rossi unveiled his special paintjob for this morning’s free practice session at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit, which combined the striking red and white stripes of the front of Simoncelli’s AGV design with his own colour scheme.

Rossi’s helmet tribute is one of dozens in the paddock as the MotoGP world mourns the loss of Simoncelli.

The popular Italian lost his life in a tragic accident during last month’s Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang.

He lost control of his San Carlo Gresini Honda RC212V machine on the second lap of the race and he was struck by Colin Edwards and Rossi.

Rossi was a close personal friend of Simoncelli’s and speaking about his helmet design he said: “I really like the helmet a lot. I talked with Aldo (Drudi) and told him I wanted to make a really nice tribute to Sic. The most important thing of Marco’s helmet were the two red stripes and we didn’t really want to make an exact copy of his design. That’s one that only he could use. So we chose away of combining the two helmets and it came out very nice. It has a very important meaning and it has a great emotion for me.”

British rider Cal Crutchlow was also sporting a tribute lid to Simonceli. It read ‘Ciao Super Sic’ on the back of his Arai and he used it for the first time today in practice.