Valentino Rossi To Ducati

Valentino Rossi To Ducati

The long international nightmare is over and now people can openly talk about what has been known for almost two months now, seven time MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi will be riding for the Ducati MotoGP team in 2011 and 2012. The move was a shock to only those who have been out of contact from the world for the last six to nine months. In fact it was just ten days ago that Ducati CEO Gabriele del Torchio let it slip in an interview to Cycle News that “The Doctor” had signed.

Everyone was all in a flutter as this was a breach of a gentlemans agreement about when, where and how the announcement would go down. At the end of the day things went as agreed after much finger pointing and name calling between Ducati, Cycle News and Yamaha flew back and forth. Yamaha announced after the race at Brno Sunday that Valentino was leaving, Rossi had a statement ready thanking everyone at Yamaha, but that “it was time for a new challenge.” Right after that Valentino was announced as Ducati’s next rider, taking over for Casey Stoner who is leaving to ride for the factory Repsol Honda team next year.

Now that the Rossi deal is done and dusted, reportedly for between €17-20mil a year, the rest of the pieces can begin to slot into place. Since the next round of the MotoGP championship is in the US at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, expect Ducati to announce that Nicky Hayden has been resigned for one year with an option for a second year, and that Ben Spies will move up from the satellite Tech3 team to take Rossi’s place at the Factory Yamaha team.

Now that Rossi is signed he will not be getting any new parts to test or many more updates for the rest of the year, In exchange he will be released from his contract after the final race at Valencia in November so that he can immediately begin testing with Ducati on the Tuesday after the Valencia round.