MOTO GP

Rossi could close deal to stay in MotoGP later this month

According to his longtime friend and business partner, Valentino is expected to reach an agreement with Yamaha later this month.
Valentino Rossi must decide whether or not to continue in MotoGP in 2021 after losing his place on the Yamaha team to Fabio Quartararo. The Doctor had previously indicated that he wants to continue running and, according to a long-time partner of the Italian, this confirmation should be close.
Rossi recently admitted that the hiatus caused by the pandemic left him more relaxed about the prospect of potentially retiring. However, according to his longtime friend and business partner, Uccio Salucci, there is an expectation that negotiations with Yahama will accelerate in the coming weeks, now that Rossi would have come to the conclusion that he wants to keep running
"Vale has the attitude of someone who wants to do everything but go out," said Salucci in an interview with Sky Italia. "He is a force of nature, a guy who keeps others going too, he also has a great desire, and always surprises us. Our most likely intention is to continue in 2021".
"When Vale changes teams, he always creates movement, expectations, tension. It is not a factory team, but we will have an official bike. They have a great structure. Yamaha is there to support us and we have a good relationship with them. We will probably have Franco [Morbidelli] as a teammate, which should be a good experience ".
"We still have some things to define, but we should hit the hammer at the end of the month."
He added: "We are in the previous step [discussing the composition of the team], we will talk about it next week with Yamaha to see how to proceed, but we didn’t talk much about the team because Vale wanted to think a little to decide whether to continue or not".
"We will follow up and discuss the details with Yamaha in the next ten days."
If Rossi chooses to switch to Petronas SRT in 2021, he will likely partner with Italian-Brazilian Franco Morbidelli, who is a member of the VR46 Academy and current teammate of Fabio Quartararo. 

Jamie Klein, Motorsport