FORCADA SAYS YAMAHA SHOULD NOT HAVE BROUGHT ROSSI BACK

Ramon Forcada, Jorge Lorenzo’s former Yamaha crew chief, believes the team made the wrong call by bringing Valentino Rossi back for the 2013 MotoGP season. Speaking on the Duralavita podcast alongside Lorenzo, Forcada argued that Yamaha’s choices behind its later decline stretched back well before recent years.

Rossi had left Yamaha for Ducati at the start of the 2010s, then returned after two difficult seasons with the Italian manufacturer. Forcada said the team could have used that moment to move in a new direction. “We’ve won seven world championships with this bloke, but that era’s over,” he recalled thinking. Yamaha should, in his view, have sought riders who could shape the bike around their own strengths.

Forcada acknowledged Rossi’s stature, calling him “the perfect rider”, but criticised the decision to bring back a team that had previously left with him and, as Forcada put it, had also spoken badly about Yamaha. He said the move showed “a lack of character”.

Lorenzo, who shared the factory garage with Rossi, said the Italian’s return was understandable from a financial perspective. Rossi was in his early thirties and, according to Lorenzo, came back asking for five or six times less than he had earned when he left. “It’s tempting. I understand why Yamaha were tempted,” Lorenzo said.

Forcada’s preferred alternative was Dani Pedrosa, then riding for Honda. He said Yamaha lacked the courage to pursue the Spaniard, whom he believed could have been an ideal match for the bike. Forcada’s reasoning was that Yamaha’s machine was less demanding to ride, while Pedrosa had to wrestle with the Honda—a disadvantage for him at the time.

Pedrosa won 31 premier-class Grands Prix but never claimed a MotoGP world title. Forcada’s view raises a long-running hypothetical: whether a move to Yamaha might have given the Spaniard a better chance of winning the championship that eluded him.