Valentino Rossi To Ducati

[St Landrew]

Hmm, so the rumours that have been bubbling under the surface are starting to break through.

 

OK, for the benefit of people who won't have a clue, here's a potted history. Here we have a bloke who is quite simply the embodiment of racing on 2 wheels. He's massively respected by F1 drivers and other top sports people. He's won 8 World Championships - 6 in the top level MotoGP and 2 in the 125 class, with the 2009 MotoGP Championship almost within his grasp. He won his first MotoGP Championship on a good Honda, which got faster with every season he helped develop it. But then Honda pretty much said all the credit was theirs, and so Rossi decided to go to Yamaha, taking the very important Chief mechanic Jeremy Burgess with him, and ride the slow, at that time, M1, just to show them. And he did, straight away, by winning the next World Championship. A 2 year gap in 2006-07 went by [coming second in the Championship each year], before he got his next on the Yamaha in 2008, and Honda only won it once in 2006, and their WC Nicky Hayden said second placed Rossi deserved to be WC anyhow. Now Yamaha have started to get a bit arrogant, and rumours have been flying around that Rossi might decide to show them too.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/motorbikes/8169745.stm

 

So the reports in Italian newspapers are that Rossi may have a special Ducati satellite team built around him for 2010. Only he could be accommodated this way, as no other sportsperson [possibly other than Beckham in football] carries the profile in his own sport that Rossi does. Him going to Ducati would be like the prodigal son coming home. And if he was to win yet another World Championship with another factory, a feat pretty much unprecedented, and one I'm sure he'd love to do, it would ultimately put his stamp on the world of sport, if he ever needed to do more. And there's Giacomo Agostini's all-time win record out there within touching distance too.

 

Now if he was on a Triumph I'd really get excited.

Edited 16 October, 2009 by St Landrew