Valentino Rossi

I started reading Valentino Rossi's autobiography the other day. My wife bought it for me at Christmas, as part penance for taping over the race at Philip Island when Rossi won his first 500c World Championship.


It's an interesting read so far, and deals a lot with his reasons for changing from Honda to Yamaha for the 2004 season. And it's very reminiscent of Michael Schumacher moving from Benetton to Ferrari in 1996 (can it really be 10 years ago?). Both men were world champions and needed to prove it was them that was the best and not just the machine. So they opted to move from a proven successful team, to a team with a great name, but no recent success. Rossi won his first race with Yamaha, and went on to win the championship. To me it seems that Rossi will need another challenge soon - there's no point to him moving to another team, or staying at Yamaha. Which leaves cars.

Rossi is due to test an F2004 at Valencia next week, and you can bet that Ferrari aren't just doing it to amuse themselves. There's been a lot of talk about Rossi driving for Ferrari in 2007, but since I've started reading the book, I'm a lot more inclined to agree.