Le Mans MotoGP: Marco Melandri hails stunning second

Marco Melandri was in dreamland after he produced the first major shock of 2009, the Italian riding the unfancied Hayate to a stunning second place in the French MotoGP race.

The former world 250 champion was ecstatic after he ended a gripping flag-to-flag race behind dominant Fiat Yamaha rider Jorge Lorenzo.

Starting on a wet track in ninth place, Melandri stormed into the top three by lap six to start chasing down compatriot Andrea Dovizioso on the Repsol Honda.

He opted to pull into the pits for full slick Bridgestone tyres on a drying track on lap seven which dropped him back to 11th place.

But by lap 13 as most of the field hurried into pitlane to change tyres, Melandri found himself in second place.
He got to within 4.4s of Jorge Lorenzo when the Spaniard came in for slicks on lap 13, but Melandri had no answer to the Spaniard in the second half of the race.

He eventually finished over 17 seconds adrift of Lorenzo but Melandri could barely contain his delight, having wondered only three months ago whether he would be riding in 2009 following the withdrawal of Kawasaki’s official factory team in January.

 “It’s awesome to be here for me and I think I’m dreaming right now, “beamed Melandri, who had already upset the odds with successive top six finishes in the last two races in the Twin Ring Motegi and Jerez.

“It’s crazy and right now I’m not sure what I did. I am so happy and I just have to say thanks to my team that has been pushing to be able to race this year. It was a very tough race. I couldn’t believe to get a better result than I did in Jerez but the weather gave me a great chance. At the start when the track was very, very wet I caught a lot of people and I was very fast. When it was dry I had a lot of problems controlling the engine braking in the long braking areas. I changed the bike maybe one lap earlier than I wanted and when I went out with a slick tyre my only goal was to be smooth and not think about the lap time. It was very, very dangerous and I almost went down where Valentino (Rossi) crashed because in that place you couldn’t understand where it was wet and dry because it is very black the surface from the car tyres. I saw on my pitboard P16 and then P9 and P7 but I wasn’t overtaking anyone. I figured they were all changing their bikes and when I saw Andrea in front of me I understood I was close to the front. I passed him and saw P2 and it was a very long final ten laps for me.”

Asked if he thought he might be able to pressurise Lorenzo when he reduced the gap to just four seconds shortly before the halfway stage, Melandri added: “I was dreaming that he still had a rain tyre on. I could see he was pretty slow but when I saw him I understood he was doing the first few laps slower just to clean the slick tyres. When he came back to his normal pace I knew I could finish second, but to me that is like winning the race.”