At the beginning of 2020, Yamaha officially announced the decision to no longer allocate a saddle from its factory team to Valentino Rossi, embracing the young Fabio Quartararo as his replacement. The Iwata-based company, however, supported the champion from Tavullia in his transfer to Petronas, the customer stable, guaranteeing him an ‘official’ treatment. But the marriage was not lucky and the ‘Doctor’ did not get better results than an eighth place at the finish line in Austria, in the rain. “I expected to be more competitive this year, otherwise I would have stopped already in 2020 ″, the 42 year old from Pesaro honestly confessed, thus motivating his performances not in line with the rest of his career: “Technically we say that I’m not at the top, the bike is not competitive. And neither do I.. And this is the result of this combination ”.
Rossi is convinced he made the correct choice: “Many ask me, but I’m really fine. I feel good. Until 2019 I was terrified of the thought of quitting and I was worried. Now we are organizing ourselves to do a good program in the car, not at the level of the bike. I could have done it a year earlier, but I wanted to try to the end “, and joked, in the interview granted to Sky: “I wanted to be sure that there was nothing more to be done and this year I have removed all doubts“. Finally, a thought about the many years spent at the top was not lacking: “If I had been competitive, I would have continued. But when you look at the pictures of when I was winning, we were going a lot slower than now, for a number of things. I was good, I worked hard and I managed to improve a lot over the years. I’m the only one who runs in my golden days, even seeing those who ran in 125 “, concluded the Yamaha Petronas rider.
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