Yamaha Scraps Off Valentino Rossi S Superbike Project 3726_1

This was indeed bound to happen.  Only there was a false start when someone intimated this official news a few days ago through a fake twitter account and then an intimation came that it would be on the 15th of August, 2012 when the teams would assemble at Indianapolis after the summer break that the formal announcement would come.  But surprisingly it has come today, five days before the anticipated announcement.  As is the usual protocol Ducati first announced that Valentino Rossi would be leaving them at the end of 2012 and soon after Yamaha announced that Valentino Rossi has signed up with them to partner Jorge Lorenzo for 2013 and 2014.  News also has started circulating that Ducati have finalized on Andrea Dovizioso as the replacement for Rossi in 2013 and this is most surprising given that last year Dovizioso was firm that he would not go to Ducati since the bike had a notorious reputation of unrideability and also because his present teammate at Tech3 Yamaha, Cal Crutchlow has been more than enthusiastic to replace Rossi, even claiming that he could win on the Ducati.  The Dovizioso bit is still in the realm of rumours so one will have to wait a bit more for the official news to be out.  We will soon be writing about how the grid could be next year now that the key piece has fallen into place in the rider jigsaw puzzle for next year.

Press Statement

It is with great pleasure that Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd confirms the signing of Valentino Rossi to ride for the Yamaha Factory Racing MotoGP Team for 2013 and 2014.

Valentino Rossi first joined Yamaha in 2004 and achieved four MotoGP World Champion titles with the Yamaha YZR-M1 in 2004 & 2005 and again in 2008 & 2009. He won 46 Grand Prix races with Yamaha over a 7 year period before leaving at the end of the 2010 MotoGP season.

Rossi, who is presently 8th in the Championship standings, will partner Jorge Lorenzo who currently leads the 2012 MotoGP World Championship by 23 points, having taken five victories from the first ten completed races of the 18 race series.

Lin Jarvis
Managing Director, Yamaha Motor Racing

“This announcement is once again excellent news for Yamaha. In June we were able to sign Jorge Lorenzo for the 2013-14 campaign and now we are able to confirm Valentino Rossi for the next two years. In doing so we have been able to put together the strongest possible team to challenge for victories and to promote the Yamaha brand.

We have run this ‘super team’ together in 2008, 2009 and 2010 and during that time we achieved the ‘triple crown’ titles with Rider, Manufacturer and Team World Championship victories for three consecutive years.

The target for the future is obvious and we will do our utmost to achieve our goals.

I have no doubt that with the experience, knowledge, skills and speed of these two great champion riders we will be able to challenge for many race wins and for the 2013 & 2014 World Championship titles.

The signing of Valentino completes our future planning for the Yamaha Factory Racing MotoGP Team. Now that this is done we will put our 100% efforts into completing the job at hand and to supporting Ben Spies and Jorge Lorenzo in their search for race victories and for Jorge’s 2012 World Championship title challenge.”