Rossi Valencia Test Forces Ducati to Backpedal?
You have to marvel at the unfolding of the Ducati saga cette semaine. First, Cycle World appears to have a genuine scoop with the Ducati CEO outing Rossi as a hired gun for 2011, then Ducati issues a statement denying everything, which the magazine adds to its site without making any further edits to the story. Translation? The deal is gone, we just shouldn’t have said so yet. The real question is why not?
Our immediate thought was simply that even mighty Ducati doesn’t want to upset Valentino Rossi who is planning to formally reveal his 2011 plans during the Brno round of the MotoGP championship next week. Yamaha also plans to unveil its 2011 lineup and this is expected to feature 2010 champion elect Jorge Lorenzo and alien in waiting, Ben Spies (Cal Cruthlow will likely take Ben’s Tech 3 spot).
Perhaps a better explanation is the unspoken gentlemen’s agreement between teams that allows for a dignified exit from team A before team B announces their new star. Think of the orderly Casey Stoner to Honda announcement chain. An article on UK Eurosport pointedly surmises that it may in fact be all about testing.
Testing is a precious commodity and Ducati will want Rossi to ride the Desmosedici right after the final round of the 2010 series in Valencia. This will be up to Yamaha since Rossi will remain contracted to the company for the balance of this year.
There are several reasons. The first is that Ducati will want Yamaha to let Rossi test a Desmosedici straight after the Valencia season finale. Most contracts run to the end of the calendar year and if Yamaha feel Ducati has robbed them of a face-saving farewell, they could – just as Honda did in 2003 – refuse to let Rossi ride until 2011.
link: Yahoo! Eurosport
This explanation seems the most reasonable. It is unlikely that Cycle World would have attributed the Rossi comments to the Ducati CEO if he didn’t in fact utter them (and it is not something that could be a misquotation) and the fact that the story is still up and not redacted indicates the magazine believes it is on firm ground.
While we wait for August 15th at Brno you can support the Rossi to Ducati cause with Ducati News Today and be in to win a copy of Ring of Fire: The Inside Story of Valentino Rossi and MotoGP by Rick Broadbent. Read Why Rossi will Finish his Career on a Ducati to get our take on why he is going to make the move.
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