Rossi to Petronas: could it be a promotion?

Ever since then – at least until the 2020 rear slick arrived – the M1 has been unable to use its strong points and has been hurt by its weak points.

Consider all the multiple different chassis the factory Yamaha team used between 2016 and 2019, trying to find more grip.

During that period Rossi and Viñales tried this chassis and that chassis, then kept swapping this way and that from one track to the nest. One year they ended the season by switching to the previous year’s chassis at the last race. That’s what you call confusion!

Meanwhile the satellite teams – Tech 3 and then Petronas SRT– kept racing with what they’d got. Their bikes remained mostly unchanged, because the factory policy is to develop the bike with its official team and leave its indie team on older, lower-spec kit.

Even better, the year-old bikes given to Tech 3 and Petronas (with the exception of Quartararo this year) have a full season’s development behind them, with a full season’s data. So they are in the best state they can be in. Meanwhile the factory riders start anew every season, building data, building knowhow, race by race.

Occasionally the indie riders complain they wanted the later kit, but mostly they continue turning laps with what they have. And this is the secret to success in motorcycle racing.

Bike racing is 99 per cent about feel, so the more laps you ride without changing the set-up, the more you get to know your bike and the more intimate you become with its behaviour, so when the front tyre slides you’re already expecting it, so you’re ready to do whatever you need to save that slide.

When you go out to ride with a new chassis or significantly different settings you have none of that intimate knowledge, none of that ability to predict the motorcycle’s behaviour, so when the bike does something bad it mostly catches you by surprise.

There is proof to all of this. Look at the results of indie Yamaha riders over the years: Quartararo, Franco Morbidelli, Johann Zarco, Crutchlow, Bradley Smith, Andrea Dovizioso and so on.

Their achievements on indie M1s are proof of the fact that it’s easier for a rider to find a hundredth from within himself than from the motorcycle. True, Rossi will have 2021 bikes next year, but he won’t have engineers thrusting new bits and pieces at him all the time, which may or may not work.

There are other positives to Rossi’s move from factory team to indie team.

At his heart Rossi is a hippy, like his dad. He may fly around in private jets and enjoy sailing the Mediterranean on flashy boats, but he’s just a hippy with a few hundred million in the bank.

Therefore he will most likely enjoy being in a lower-key team, with fewer layers of management and (hopefully) fewer corporate duties to perform. Also, he reminded us at the weekend that he won his first premier-class title – the 500cc world championship with Honda in 2001 – riding for an independent team, working alongside, not inside the corporate structure of HRC.

Another big question is this – is Petronas ready for Rossi? The team has done remarkably well during its first two seasons, largely thanks to the skills of Quartararo, who the team took on board thanks to massive pressure from the French Yamaha importer, rather than its own intuition.

Rossi’s status as the paddock superstar – worshipped by fans at every race – will force Petronas to work in a new way, if the team doesn’t want to be besieged by well-wishers throughout the weekend, distracting its staff from their jobs.

The final question is how will Rossi get along with his crew no longer intact? Throughout his premier-class career the Italian has mostly kept the same people around him because that’s the way he likes to work.

He calls his crew his family, but at the end of this season he will say goodbye to two of his most faithful family members that have been with him for decades.

Australian Alex Briggs helped Mick Doohan to his five 500cc titles and was part of Rossi’s crew from the end of 1999, alongside fellow Aussie and crew chief Jeremy Burgess.

New Zealander Brent Stephens was with the factory Yamaha team when Rossi switched to the marque in 2004, so he was assigned to Rossi as the ‘Yamaha expert’ in the crew.

“I fought a lot to have all my team when I move at the end of this year, but sometimes it’s impossible,” said Rossi at Barcelona. “At this moment of my career it’s normal everything is not going to be perfect for me. Unfortunately it’s not possible for Alex and Brent. I’m sad, but it’s like this.”

No one knows why Petronas doesn’t want Briggs and Stephens. Apparently, the issue wasn’t money, so what was it? Perhaps Petronas SRT wants to stamp its authority on the situation and make sure that Rossi knows who’s in charge. But will the team find two mechanics who can work really well with Rossi and cope with the pressure of spinning spanners for the biggest name the sport has ever known?

Next year Rossi will also lose his other longest-standing mechanic, Bernard Ansiau, who will stay with the factory team. Ansiau has quite a CV: three 500cc world titles with Wayne Rainey, five with Mick Doohan and seven 500 and MotoGP crowns with Rossi.