EXCLUSIVE: Why "somebody was against the idea” of Valentino Rossi joining Yamaha

MotoGP celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024 and since that maiden grand prix season in 1949, the world championship has been shaped by many major moments. One of those came 20 years ago in 2004 when Valentino Rossi won his fourth premier class crown.

By that point, Rossi was motorcycle racing’s superstar. Winning the final title of the 500cc era in 2001 with Honda in just his second season, Rossi kicked off the new four-stroke MotoGP era as all-conquering on the factory Honda RC211V.

Rossi won 11 grands prix in 2002 and finished second in the rest, registering only one non-score that year. He cruised to a second premier class title, and added a third in similarly dominant fashion in 2003 with nine victories.

But as the world heralded the genius of Rossi, that sentiment wasn’t being championed within Honda’s Japanese base. The credit for Rossi’s success, as far as HRC was concerned, belonged fully to the RC211V. Naturally, that kind of thing never really sits well with the massive ego motorcycle racers carry around with them.

As 2003 wore on, Rossi’s management began to engage Yamaha in discussions - going to great lengths to keep it as secret as possible. Then team manager Davide Brivio revealed several years ago that he and Lin Jarvis were forced to hide under a table ahead of one such meeting as they thought someone was about to enter the tent they were in.

A deal was eventually reached to bring Rossi to Yamaha in 2004. But Honda wouldn’t make things easy for the Italian, who was held to his HRC contract right to its conclusion, meaning he could do no testing of the M1 until the early months of 2004.

While Yamaha and the Rossi camp had to get their heads together on the financial aspect of the deal, as well as which crew members would join the Italian, there was also a culture within the Japanese marque not dissimilar to Honda’s way of thinking that could have stopped this era-defining move altogether.

“When we were talking to Valentino,” Brivio tells Crash.net as we discuss Rossi’s 2004 title, “there was a different way of thinking inside of Yamaha, because somebody was against the idea of getting Valentino because they said ‘he’s a multi-world champion: if he comes to Yamaha and we don’t win, it’s Yamaha’s fault.

“If we win, it’s because of Valentino. So we have nothing to gain as a brand’. This was one way [of thinking]. Again, coming back to what was the culture: the culture was that what is important is the bike. And somebody inside of Yamaha was saying ‘we don’t need Valentino because we will make such a bike, so good, so strong, that we can win with any rider’.”

The problem with that mindset was that Yamaha so far hadn’t built a bike strong enough in the four-stroke era to win the championship. In fact, by the end of 2003 Yamaha hadn’t won a title since the 1992 500cc campaign with Wayne Rainey. After that point, Suzuki won twice - in 1993 and 2000 - while Honda swept up the rest of the titles between Mick Doohan, Alex Criville and Rossi.

As Rossi romped to consecutive MotoGP crowns in 2002 and 2003, Yamaha achieved just two grands prix wins. Such was its poor form that Rossi joined a Yamaha team that didn’t win at all in 2003, with the marque’s only podium a third at the French GP courtesy of Alex Barros. The top Yamaha rider in the standings that year was Carlos Checa, some 234 points behind Rossi.

It seemed improbable that Rossi would get anywhere near challenging for the title in 2004. But crew chief Jeremy Burgess, armed with all of the knowhow that made the RC211V so good, was able to identify what the M1 needed.  A new, ‘big bang’ inline-four engine was built by Masao Furusawa - Yamaha’s technical chief - while Burgess had the size of the bike changed and the electronics tweaked to improve braking performance and maximise the M1’s cornering ability.

Yamaha and Rossi turned up to the opening round of the 2004 campaign in South Africa with a much-improved M1. And they duly went on to take pole position and the race win, with Rossi beating arch rival Max Biaggi - mounted on a Pons-run Honda - in a thrilling battle. In fact, Rossi came out on top ahead of an armada of RC211Vs headed by Biaggi, followed by Sete Gibernau, Barros and Nicky Hayden.

On the cooldown lap, Rossi took a moment to sit by his new bike and reflect on the mountain he’d just climbed. Then he got on with the job at hand. He won eight more times in 2004 and wrapped up the championship with a round to spare in Australia, becoming the first rider since Eddie Lawson in 1989 to score back-to-back titles with different brands (the American going from Yamaha to Honda to do this).

Rossi and Yamaha were even more dominant in 2005. He won 11 races and finished all but one on the podium to utterly demolish Honda’s Marco Melandri by 147 points. Clearly, the M1 was now the bike to beat in MotoGP. But Brivio believes Yamaha was also able to prove that a good bike is nothing without a great rider.

“The culture of the time, the way of thinking at that time in 2002, 2003, was that the bike was the most important thing regardless of who was going to be the rider,” Brivio adds. “And bringing Valentino to Yamaha, we kind of showed that both elements are important in this world. And I’m quite proud of that because I think we gave back some value to the man, the sport. Ok, working for a manufacturer I shouldn’t say that, but I think at that time we had the feeling that we contributed to balance a little bit more the importance of the bike compared to the importance of the rider.

“So, this is one good memory. And of course we had a lot of fun, a lot of enjoyment and was something at the time the situation is like - I don’t know - if Pecco Bagnaia decided to leave Ducati because he’s not happy and then he decides to go to one manufacturer who is not winning and win the title the next year. That was the situation at the time. So, it was something big. It was really nice. Of course, we had a lot of fun and I also learned a lot. And I have to say that Valentino changed the mentality and the culture, the racing mentality, inside of Yamaha.”

Indeed, the next-best Yamaha rider behind Rossi in the standings in 2005 was his factory team-mate Colin Edwards in fourth - 188 points back and with a meagre haul of three podiums. In 2004, the next Yamaha to Rossi was Carlos Checa, who was 187 points adrift with just one podium finish to his credit.

In fact, from 2004 to 2007 no other Yamaha rider other than Rossi took the M1 to race wins. It wouldn’t be until 2008 when Jorge Lorenzo arrived as a rookie to upset the balance of power in Yamaha that the Japanese marque had two riders capable or winning on its machinery.

Without the arrival of Rossi in 2004, reckons Brivio, Yamaha would have pressed on under its old thinking of placing all the importance on the bike in the hopes that the marque could then entice a top rider down the line.

“Probably if Valentino didn’t go [to the team in 2004], probably Yamaha would have tried to make a good bike,” Brivio concludes. “Probably it would have taken longer because maybe we would have needed to make a good bike, try to create confidence in top riders and maybe in the next two, three years try to invite a top rider to Yamaha and win. So, it would have taken longer. Maybe Jorge Lorenzo would have arrived later on or maybe somebody else and probably win, but maybe two, three, four years later.”

Of course, without Rossi’s arrival, Burgess also wouldn’t have been there to point out the flaws that held back the M1. As 2003 proved continually miserable for Yamaha, there were already rumours that it could pull out of MotoGP. In hindsight, it’s hard to see how Yamaha’s fortunes could have improved without anyone other than Rossi at the helm. 

The Rossi/Yamaha partnership would deliver two more titles, in 2008 and 2009, before the age of Lorenzo saw him win the championship three times between 2010 and 2015. Rossi would leave Yamaha at the end of 2010 as tensions boiled over between himself and Lorenzo, with the Italian heading for an ill-fated Ducati stint in 2011 and 2012.

What Rossi and Burgess were able to do at Yamaha could not be replicated at Ducati, whose race department at the time was too stubborn. That would be undone by the arrival of Gigi Dall’Igna as general manager in 2014, with that beginning Ducati down the path that would see them become MotoGP’s modern day kings.

Rossi returned to Yamaha in 2013 and came close to a fifth title for the brand in 2015. He remained a Yamaha rider through to the end of his MotoGP career at the conclusion of the 2021 season.

While the wins dried up in the final years of his MotoGP tenure, Rossi’s legend is well-cemented. Arguably, much of that is down to his seismic move to Yamaha 20 years ago…