Valentino Rossi announced on August 5 his retirement from MotoGP when the current championship ends. The Italian will thus put an end to 26 seasons in the World Cup full of many lights and some shadows. Sportingly, most of those blots are occurring in the last year.
The #46 began to lose punch in the final part of 2019 and in winter Yamaha , according to him, decided to send him to the Petronas satellite for 2021 and give his place in the official team to Fabio Quartararo. Time has ended up proving the brand of the tuning forks right, which is about to win its first drivers’ title since 2015 with Jorge Lorenzo with the Frenchman.
Going back to Rossi, the man from Tavullia started 2020 strongly. In the second race in Jerez he climbed to the podium – his last to date – and until the middle of the season he was around the top 5 in each race. In fact, in Barcelona he fell to the ground when he was fighting to win.
That fall marked the beginning of the ordeal he endured in the final part of the championship. Rossi crashed in the next race as well, in France , on the first lap. He subsequently contracted COVID-19 and missed the Aragón double date. Il dottore reappeared in Valencia and did so with a crash in the race, while in the last two races he did not get more than 12th place at the finish line.
Switching from official Monster colors to private Petronas ones for this season started out promisingly. At the opening of the championship in Qatar , he qualified fourth on the grid, a mirage of what the year is going to be. In 15 grand prix races to date, only five have been in Q2, while on four occasions he has started from 20th place. In the race he has scored points in less than half of the occasions (7), being the eighth place in Austria –thanks to the rain that fell at the end of the test– his best result.
Beyond his obvious loss of speed – he is 21st in the standings and last among the riders who have competed all season – another fact confirms the decline of the nine-time world champion: the number of crashes. If he has stood out for something in more than two decades as a pilot, it was for his infallibility. As he saw how the young riders passed him by rhythm, Rossi became strong due to his regularity to finish
Well, with the fall he suffered in the last Grand Prix of the Americas, he already has nine so far this year, his highest figure since he returned to Yamaha in 2013 . The numbers don’t lie: Rossi is no longer fast or invulnerable.
(Click here on this link or on the photo to see all the victories of Valentino Rossi in 500cc/MotoGP)
