Valentino Rossi recalls “profound desolation” of Marco Simoncelli death in new book

Valentino Rossi has written of the “profound desolation” he felt after the death of Marco Simoncelli at the 2011 Malaysian MotoGP.

Rossi and Simoncelli had long been friends by the time the 2008 250cc world champion arrived in MotoGP in 2010. By 2011, Simoncelli had emerged as one of MotoGP’s most promising riders and charismatic personalities.

He was killed at the Malaysian Grand Prix that year in a crash that involved Rossi. Simoncelli lost the front at turn 11 on lap two, but instead of falling and sliding to the outside of the track, he held on and tried to save it, veering to the inside. Rossi and Colin Edwards were behind him and could not avoid making contact.

It wasn’t until he got back to the pits that Rossi understood exactly what had happened.

“I head toward the garage,” Valentino Rossi writes, recalling the Simoncelli incident, in his book La Mia Storia (My Story) in a section published as an excerpt by the Spanish publication El Mundo.

“I walk inside and come to a stop. Uccio [Alessio Salucci] approaches me; he is devastated.

“He says, ‘His [Simoncelli] helmet came off... His helmet came off.’

“I curse, close my eyes, and let out a string of expletives. Because a helmet is a helmet – and if the chin strap breaks, it means the impact was devastating.

“On the monitors, they begin to show footage of the crash. I see the moment of impact.

“A sense of total, profound desolation washes over me.

“I feel responsible for what happened.

“It is a weight I can barely endure, even though I know the dynamics of the accident itself were the result of a series of circumstances.”

Rossi would continue racing for a further 10 years before retiring in 2021. He was asked soon after the incident whether he would consider retiring at the end of 2011.

“No – that never crossed my mind,” he writes.

“It didn’t even occur to me during those days.

“Everything – absolutely everything – about the way it happened was simply part of this sport.

“Marco knew that, and he had always loved to race.

“I had always known it, too. And I, for my part, had loved racing from the very beginning.”