He won today with a Norrick Abe sticker on his helmet, a tribute to the Japanese 500cc race winner who died almost a
year ago in a traffic accident. A Japanese journalist asked him about the tribute and received as elegant, human and
charming an answer as you could hope for. Vale explained how when he first came to the 125s there was a gang of fast
Japanese riders who he liked and was great friends with, and how he was so happy to see them this weekend - Ueda,
Tokodume, Sakata and 'my teacher' Haruchika Aoki. But it was the Japanese GP of 1995 that made the young Rossi a
Norrick fan - he nearly wore out the video of that race. With typical attention to detail Vale's helmet sticker
showed a red bike with the green numbers - that was the Honda that Abe rode in that famous wild-card race , not the
Yamaha of his fulltime GP career.