Interesting article ... http://www.cycleworld.com/2012/08/09/valentino-rossi-yamaha-rumors/?cmpid=obinsite
Rossi is the #2 rider to Lorenzo, that's gotta hurt!! Stoner had some brutally honest things to say about Rossis time with Ducati: "Stoner has accused Rossi of failing to ride the bike to its limits and castigated the multiple world champion and his Australian crew chief Jeremy Burgess for boasting they could produce a Ducati on which "any rider could win." "They ate their words from day one," Stoner said on Wednesday. "Jerry saying that it would take him 80 seconds to fix that bike and that it was a simple issue and now they have had almost two years and have not made any inroads. "Valentino obviously doesn't want to push limits and ride a bike that is not perfect, he has admitted that. "Obviously he doesn't want to put the effort in with Ducati." In his most recent race Rossi was eighth and 10 seconds behind teammate Nicky Hayden when he crashed out of the US GP. In his first stint with Yamaha - from 2004 to 2010 - Rossi won 46 races and four world titles. In a stunning back-flip Rossi is walking away from a reported $A35 million deal at Ducati to take a pay cut to return to Yamaha. The seven-time world champion failed to win a race on the machine in his 22 months with the team. Although now with Honda, Stoner remains a hero in the eyes of Ducati fans, having won 23 races and the 2007 world title with the red team. There have been months of tensions with Rossi citing a lack of development work by Ducati engineers while he has floundered to master the unique style of the bike. "I just feel completely sorry for Ducati that Valentino has gone there and done nothing but complain about the bike for almost two years," Stoner said. "The amount of times that guy has had to eat his words is not funny, but people still forgive him for it." Rossi will now have to take the backseat behind his rival, Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo. "Our main investment is in Jorge and he is the No.1 candidate to be champion both this year and next year. He is our No.1 rider," said Yamaha MotoGP boss Lin Jarvis." Mmm, gotto hurt....no longer the "Doctor", more like the "Add on"...
@iva: The reasons for Ducati's failure to be competitive in recent years are pretty complicated and I'm not sure it's fair to cite Rossi's failure to "master the unique style of the bike." One could argue that hiring a world champion and then failing to build a bike that works for him is could be the problem (and also a bit oversimplistic). Some thoughts: 1) The only person who ever made the Duke look good was Stoner, but even he spent an awful lot of time on his arse. He bailed from Ducati at the right time and I don't think it was just a lucky call on his part. 2) Spec tyres. The performance attributes of the tyres just don't flatter the Duke. Perhaps the team are unwilling to sacrifice their design ideals to make the bike work with the tyres, or perhaps they've been straight-up unable to start again from scratch (see 3 below). Recent design upgrades (like the ally frame and efforts to improve engine tractability) have made little perceptible improvement, suggesting that issues are further under the hood. Audi may want to see real improvements, so it's possible that Duke will have to build a more "vanilla Japanese clone" bike, which would be a shame. There's every chance that there will be resistance to fundamental change, but if Audi are paying... Which brings us to: 3) Budget. Duke don't have a lot of money to spend compared to Honda and Yamaha (who themselves seem to be struggling to provide more than one useable machine on race day). For example, building a new narrower angle vee-four motor to fix possible weight distribution issues doesn't come cheap, even assuming that the Ducati heads would approve such heresy (see 2 above). 4) Nicky Hayden is IMO the hardest working, most conscientious racer in MotoGP (in addition to being mighty quick). A lot of guys would have "done a Kocinski" on that bike by now, but he never gives less than his absolute best (and I'm not sure that any other racer would get night and day better results on the current bike). All just my $0.02 of course! It would be great (from a personal POV) to see Rossi's career enjoy an "Indian summer". He still sells an awful lot of merchandise and puts a lot of bums on seats. With MotoGP in it's current financial state that's a really important consideration.
Interesting postscript: Dovizioso to Ducati: http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/racing/andrea-dovizioso-ducati-corse-motogp-2013-2014/ As the guy who brakes as consistently hard and late as anyone in MotoGP I'll be interested to see how he gets on with front end feel. Postscript 2: Bummer, Hayden not fit to race at Brno. No replacement currently slated http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/racing/nicky-hayden-injury-brno-ducati-corse/
