Why Rossi and Vinales are unlikely to stay friends

Was Valentino Rossi at your birthday lunch the other week? If you are Maverick Vinales, you can definitely say 'yes', but I imagine he'd be in the minority.

It was all smiles when Vinales turned 22 earlier this month - you may have seen the nice little video Yamaha posted on social media. He celebrated with his new team, sitting next to boss Lin Jarvis, and his new team-mate Rossi came over from (I assume) a few seats up to join them for the photos. Maybe he also fancied some cake.

Will Rossi be on the same table to celebrate Vinales' 23rd birthday, in January 2018? I'm not so sure.

Of the riders in the MotoGP paddock, Rossi and Vinales enter 2017 with what you would consider a better-than-average relationship. There's been no animosity or incidents, they've helped each other out on track during practice and qualifying sessions - a "strategy", if you ask Vinales' predecessor Jorge Lorenzo - and they have generally looked to get on about as well as you could imagine for two sporting rivals split by 16 years.

But what the relationship between Rossi and Lorenzo has taught us is that the pressure of competition and the nature of being team-mates changes things. In any form of motorsport, the guys and/or girls you are sharing the garage with are the ones you want to beat the most. I'm not telling you anything new here.

Look at Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg with the Mercedes Formula 1 team in recent years. This was supposed to be the dream combination, in terms of management, because they were friends back in their karting days, and had come through the ranks to get to F1 together.

There are even some great photos from the 2008 Australian Grand Prix podium of them looking genuinely stoked for each other; Rosberg was up there for the first time, Hamilton had started his campaign with a race win.

The distinction then was that Rosberg was with relative underdog Williams, and Hamilton eventually won that title with McLaren. Rosberg moved to Mercedes two years later and was joined in 2013 by Hamilton.

Even in their first year as team-mates, everything was pretty happy and cheery. But when Mercedes got a massive jump on the field with the new engine regulations in 2014, all bets were off. Suddenly, Hamilton and Rosberg were in a private fight for what ended up being the next three world championships. Did that change things between the former two best friends?

"We will probably rarely see each other moving forwards, living in the same building we hardly ever see each other," Hamilton said in December, in the wake of Rosberg's shock retirement, between thinly veiled barbs about Rosberg cutting and running after winning the world title.

That's what happens when the stakes go up. Relationships, old and new, feel the strain of massive pressure and the pursuit of massive prizes. And if Yamaha can find a little bit more from its M1 bike this year, that's the situation Vinales and Rossi could find themselves in.

"The rivalry on track is always very hard, especially with your team-mate, but we can have a good relationship," Rossi said. "From 2013 when I went back to Yamaha, my relationship with Lorenzo was not so bad. We had some problems at the end of '15.

"We can have a good relationship, but especially we can work together on the bike to improve it."

It is a more mature and battle-weary Rossi these days than the one who demanded Yamaha back him over Lorenzo, and then had to up sticks for Ducati in 2011. That relationship the first time around started with a wall in the Yamaha garage in '08 when Rossi (Bridgestone) and rookie Lorenzo (Michelin) were working with different tyre suppliers.

That wall stayed well beyond Michelin's departure as the riders' relationship deteriorated. You got the feeling that Rossi liked it being there more than the man on the other side.

When Rossi went back to Yamaha in 2013 it was more civil, if not more friendly, between the two. At least until Rossi gathered that forest-worth of kindling and all of the matches he could find and sparked the massive row that overshadowed the end of the '15 season, when he was convinced Marquez was helping Lorenzo win the title. Despite the post-Valencia Grand Prix farewell photo one year later, Rossi and Lorenzo won't miss each other.

Rossi won't want anything to block his path to that elusive 10th title across the three classes, which would be his first championship since 2009. The last thing he would want is the quickest young rider in MotoGP - other than Marquez, though this year will make those comparisons more viable - rocking up, being fast and setting sights on his own first championship.

As you would expect, both Rossi and Vinales were singing from the same hymn sheet last week at Yamaha's launch, where they hammed it up for the cameras, including playing a mock game of chess over breakfast in an apparent vignette.

"For the moment, the relationship is the same," Vinales said. "We have a lot of respect between us and I hope it can continue.

"When I was a kid he was my idol - and still he is. If we lose respect, it will be no good, for myself because I saw him like an idol, and I hope we can get respect through our career from team-mates, and also it's important for Yamaha.

"When you have a good relationship, you can develop the bike well, you can talk together and that's good."

If you go back about 24 months, you will also find talk of Rossi being Marquez's idol. How that relationship has changed.

It's worth pointing out that Vinales finished his two years paired with Aleix Espargaro at Suzuki with what both riders consider an excellent relationship. They continued to hang out over the winter break.

"We were really close and we were improving the bike so much because we were working together," Vinales says.

That, though, is easy to maintain if there is a disparity in on-track fortunes. If you're not rubbing elbows for victories or trading points in a championship fight.

That was the case at Suzuki last year. After the more-experienced Espargaro led the way in 2015 over rookie Vinales, the tables more than turned in season two. Espargaro never really looked comfortable as Vinales came into his own, and the result was a whopping 13-5 qualifying advantage in Vinales' favour.

Those numbers aren't dissimilar to how Rossi and Vinales finished the year, with Rossi having outqualified his future team-mate to the tune of 15-3. Yes, they are on different bikes and Rossi's average grid position was 2.1 spots better than Vinales', but that adds another cushion of comfort to maintaining a relationship with an on-track rival.

Vinales arrives at Yamaha more than equipped to make sure those numbers look very different this year. And you know what? The odds on Vinales finishing 15-3 over Rossi in qualifying for the year are probably lower than the other way around, especially as qualifying wasn't Rossi's strongest suit during the Lorenzo years, even if he did make gains in 2016.

Rossi knows his life doesn't get any easier now that Lorenzo has moved to Ducati, and he has said that he would have preferred a team-mate in the mould of Dani Pedrosa, unlikely to command as much attention. Vinales has done plenty of that since jumping on the Yamaha with his personalised livery last November at Valencia.

If all eyes were on Lorenzo at the start of those two days of running, half of the talk was about Vinales by the end of it. He'd set the fastest time on each day, and looked like he'd been riding that Yamaha all year. Admittedly, the shift from a Suzuki to a Yamaha is one of the smaller changes you can make in MotoGP, compared to Lorenzo's 2017 move, or jumping off any bike onto a Honda.

The Suzuki suited Vinales just fine. The Yamaha generates its speed along the same lines, but with what Vinales describes as "incredible acceleration".

"The difference between both bikes is the acceleration," he says. "I feel really good, also my riding style normally was quite good on the acceleration so I can take profit off of that."

It was intimated during Yamaha's 2017 launch that in its private test at Sepang - where it was joined only by the Tech3 satellite outfit - a week after the Valencia days Vinales was blindingly quick again, and perhaps even the fastest of the four riders present.

Testing in November means little, perhaps unless you are rocking up at a new team looking find your feet and build confidence. Vinales has surely slept very well since those tests, and enjoyed his winter break. The real work doesn't even start next week in the first of 2017's pre-season tests, in Malaysia again, but in Qatar the best part of two months later.

That was where Vinales showed he was going to be a standout performer last year. He flew during pre-season testing and backed it up in the race weekend, qualifying on the front row of the grid.

Suzuki having struggled so much last year to keep rear-tyre grip, especially in hot or wet conditions, will also help Vinales. Being forced to massage his style and work to keep that grip on the Suzuki should make tyre management on the Yamaha a breeze by comparison, even if he did mention it as a key area to concentrate on during the launch.

By the same token, Rossi will not have forgotten how to ride in recent months. Turning 38 in February, he is just about the dictionary definition of 'evergreen'. Rossi's rider academy and VR46 team in Moto3 and now Moto2 almost serves as a fountain of youth, as he rides and trains with enthusiastic youngsters, and the hours spent honing his technique on the dirt track he's built at his Tavullia ranch helps as well.

He found another level last year, especially after the deflating end to 2015, to adapt to the new tyres and electronics much better than Lorenzo managed. His reward? A young new team-mate who spent '16 asserting himself as a genuine superstar.

It's hard to see how Rossi and Vinales can stay pals as this year unfolds, even if they maintain their record of not clawing on track. I would be astonished if Vinales tanks. And if he gets the upper hand over Rossi early this year, Rossi will have to try to find another new level, which is surely easier said than done when you're at an age by which most professional sportspeople have retired.

If they are both fighting Marquez for the title, that could be the rabbit to their greyhound. But if they end up in a private, hard-fought battle, all niceties are off. They won't have the time or the energy to be any more than colleagues.

They'll have more important things to do than to sing each other happy birthday.