The imminent news that Valentino Rossi has completed a one-year deal with the Petronas SRT Yamaha squad to remain in MotoGP for 2021 will bring a huge cheer from fans around the globe.
But it’ll also elicit a welcome sigh of relief from series organiser Dorna, as it ensures one more year of MotoGP’s biggest draw.
That’s an odd situation for any sporting championship to find itself in, especially given Rossi’s gradual but steady decline in form over the past few seasons.
He hasn’t been a championship contender since 2016 and is without a race win since 2017. No one is tuning in to see the Doctor’s crazy win celebrations and ferocious racing of 10 years ago.
However, the Valentino Rossi brand has managed to do something that few other athletes have been able to do by transcending their own sport and becoming a global figure. Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Tiger Woods, Usain Bolt – there is an exclusive list of sportspeople who are mainstream figures, and Rossi is on it.
You don’t have to look hard to find the evidence to support it, either. Nearly every single race on the MotoGP calendar still has a Rossi grandstand, every city in the world has scooter riders sporting Rossi replica helmets, and the commercial wing of his business, VR46, makes €30million in merchandising sales every year.
Ask the person on the street in a country not obsessed with MotoGP, like the UK, to name a motorbike racer, and odds are the only two they can name are Rossi and Guy Martin.
The good news for Dorna (and the many millions of MotoGP fans who are vocally not fans of Rossi) is that his declining form in recent years has paved the way for a kind of peaceful transition, allowing a new generation of riders to come forward to take up the mantle of the king.
For a while, it looked like his successor would be Marc Marquez. It even looked like Rossi himself would be the one to hand over the crown, until everything went wrong with their clash at Sepang in 2015 and all the controversies before and after.
But while Marquez has managed to rack up the results to stand alongside Rossi in the history books, he hasn’t quite managed to capture the public imagination in the same way.
Undoubtedly a fun guy who knows how to enjoy himself off a bike, there’s still something that feels a bit pre-planned about his elaborate victory celebrations and his antics. Add to that his almost-complete state of calm and composure when off the bike, and it means he hasn’t quite cracked the public imagination like his predecessor.
However, there are a whole host of exciting new talents currently setting out to make a name for themselves that will do the sport the power of good. Alone, 2021 factory riders like Jack Miller, Fabio Quartararo and Joan Mir aren’t going to replace Rossi, but as a combined force – with rivalries and hard racing between them – they’ve got what it takes to collectively rival the nine-time champion’s popularity.
But there’s an even greater plus in modern-day MotoGP that Rossi’s continuing time in the series is helping to promote: some of the closest racing ever, in any form of motorsport.
With a rules structure crafted to perfection and ensuring that races are regularly won by tenths of seconds and last-lap overtakes, Rossi’s role in part now is to use the latter years of his career to do what he’s done best: draw in fans who’ll soon be hooked by what they see before them regardless of Rossi.
When it all comes down to it, Valentino Rossi is MotoGP, he’s still having fun on a bike at the minute – and just imagine the global headlines should he manage to sneak in another win before the slippers and pipe beckons!
