I am not excusing Rossi ffs, can't you read ?. I am a Stoner fanboy as should be obvious to anyone, and was actually making Stoner's own point. I am saying Valentino took advantage of Stoner and Gibernau's quality and character as riders, and knew they would avoid collision, the avoidance of which was outside his own control. He would have torpedoed Stoner at a fairly high velocity if Stoner hadn't moved rapidly across the track at the Corkscrew at LS08. I suspect Stoner was fairly unhappy with the Corkscrew incident itself, which would cause Rossi to lose the place he kept now and should have then, before Rossi was widely praised for it. but was also upset by other incidents in the race. I believe Rossi nearly forced him off the track earlier in the same lap, and as Stoner said when Valentino pretty much brake tested him later in the race he put his bike off the track into the sand rather than running into the back of Rossi which he could have done without blame and would have been to his advantage, but was not something he would do, which Rossi knew and used to his advantage. I saw the Gibernau pass live with no real horse in the race, if anything with a preference for Rossi, and thought what the .... was that, again he would have torpedoed Sete who had turned into the corner on the racing line while in front as anyone would, and again had to take fairly drastic evasive action to avoid going down, with Rossi on a trajectory and at a speed which would have precluded him making the corner himself. Of course part of it was that Rossi knew he could likely get away with such behaviour without penalty which Stoner more or less implied in regard to LS08 as well.
What I agree with then and now in regard to Sepang 2015 is that Rossi didn't deliberately kick MM's brake lever. which if it occurred was incidental contact, with any contact of any variety entirely Rossi's fault given he made what was extremely far from being a racing move which I along with most on here considered should have led to his disqualification. Imo he tried to force MM off the track rather than make him crash per se, but if the crash had left MM in a dangerous position on the track that would have been Valentinos fault/responsibility. I remember most of these things but can't recall precisely if MV was one of the crazy people claiming the crash was MM's fault because he turned in, but don't think he was. My reaction at the time which is probably in the early part of this thread was that MM was absolutely stunned by a move he couldn't possibly have anticipated and just turned in normally without taking evasive action. Re-reading my post after the deadline for editing what I meant to say is that Rossi had no right to expect that there would be no collision because MM would avoid same. As I also said I consider it highly unlikely that Valentino would have tried any of the moves in question riding against Toni Elias.
What the whole weekend proved to me was that Rossi was the organ grinder for the Valeban and not some innocent bystander, and while this doesn't preclude or negate him being a great rider considered purely as a rider it certainly changed my opinion of his character. I henceforth blamed him retrospectively for a lot of what Stoner and before him Gibernau and even Biaggi copped which made much of their time in the premier class miserable, mostly undeservedly, and also for the lack of recognition of Nicky Hayden's title win, as well as prospectively for the treatment of Jorge Lorenzo including by Yamaha, who hardly feted him as other 3 time Yamaha champions were, and with whom he seems to have little relationship in his retirement. MM shaking it all off and actually thriving/using what he copped from Valentino and the Valeban as motivation for future triumphs is what made me an MM fan as well.
