"Frankly, I don’t think it’s like people are saying," he argues. "The Ducati was fastest and impressive, but the most impressive thing there was the rider. I think Rossi was trying to play with Casey at the end of the race, but Casey was determined not to accept that and just pulled away. Rossi couldn’t believe what he was seeing."
So what are the concerns of Puig and Pedrosa two races into the season, as they sit in joint second place in the championship, nine points behind Rossi and equal with Stoner, but without a win so far?
"At this moment we are struggling with many things, but we are not complaining about power," Puig says. "Dani is a rider who doesn’t complain about power: if you can give him a balanced bike he is happy. We are sure we will find a good compromise."
Puig also declines to take the conventional party line that little Dani - he weighs only 50kg, or less than eight stone - finds the new 800s easier to chuck around because they’re physically smaller than last year’s 990s. "There’s only 3kg difference in the bikes, and they’re the same length," Puig says.
He concedes that the V4 RC212 is narrower than the old V5, so that Pedrosa can now move around it better. This was certainly evident as Dani pitched the machine through Jerez’ curves. But Puig feels that generally many people in racing who should know better talk a load of…well, bollox is really the only word for it.
For example, the theory that Dani’s diminutive size gives him so many advantages over his rivals, among them superior acceleration and speed on the straight. "We believe that he has some physical disadvantages, but he must live with that," Puig says. "Sometimes if you are not heavy enough, there’s not enough weight on the rear tyre to stop it spinning in the rain, but people don’t understand this. There are a lot of people who talk about racing, but don’t respect racing."
