Should Lorenzo go to Ducati?

Last year, a team from Italy wearing red dominated the Formula 1 silly season. One of its rides was the best potentially on offer, and talent from up and down pitlane was linked to it.

Much hinged on a decision to be made on one man. Would he stay or would he be moved on? In the end, Ferrari elected to keep Kimi Raikkonen for 2016 and that was pretty much the end of that silly season.

This year, a team from Italy wearing red is set to dominate the MotoGP silly season. A ride there looks full of potential, and talent from up and down the pitlane would love to get it, and the two currently there would surely love to keep their seats.

Much hinges on a decision to be made by one man. Will he stay or will he move on? In other words, how silly this MotoGP silly season becomes is largely down to wether Ducati can woo Jorge Lorenzo away from Yamaha.

All of the factory riders are out of contact at the end of this year, but no-one jumping on a plane to Qatar last weekend really expected so much '2017' activity before the first race of the new campaign.

Bradley Smith got the ball rolling, announcing last Wednesday that he'd been told he would not be at Tech3 Yamaha beyond this season. That confused Tech3 boss Herve Poncharal, who said Smith had not, in fact, been shown the door.

"The world is crazy, we haven't started 2016 and everybody is talking about 2017," he said, exasperated, on Saturday night.

"Nobody's out. We might have the same two riders. This is not the most likely situation because we are kind of junior team to Yamaha. Bradley still has a great chance to be with us next year. Nothing is broken, nothing is finished."

Announced 24 hours later - a couple of hours before the race - Smith in fact on Saturday signed a deal with KTM, achieving his dream of becoming a factory rider in 2017 and '18 with the Austrian manufacturer.

It's a good opportunity for the Brit, who has been the leading satellite pilot in recent years, and he admits it is "surreal" to have a 2017 factory contract sorted before '16 really started.

Normally, a factory signing a rider would be the biggest story of the weekend. But in Qatar, we had two.

And with all due respect to Smith and KTM, the bigger fish was a certain Valentino Rossi, who surprised everybody on Saturday morning by announcing he had signed a two-year Yamaha extension.

Even with Rossi's age - he is now 37 - it was always the likely outcome, but even recently Rossi had been talking about waiting five or six races, or until June, to see how competitive he was and whether he was still having fun, before going on.

In the end, his decision was, essentially, "why not?" and he has team-mate Lorenzo to thank for taking a month or two or three of procrastination and pondering off his plate.

Lorenzo stated in the winter that he wanted to have a new Yamaha deal locked away before the start of the campaign. That forced Yamaha to act. Following the usual negotiations, it prepared contracts for both riders and presented them to the pair at the start of the race week.

"The reason why both riders got the offer at the same time, on Jorge's request, he wanted to have things clear before the start of the season," Yamaha managing director Lin Jarvis told the media on Saturday.

"With all respect to that request, we prepared the proposal for Jorge before the start of the season. But the way that we run our team is equal treatment. In the same timing, we prepared Valentino's agreement, because it would be not correct to do one without the other, in our opinion."

Rossi put pen to paper in Qatar, Lorenzo did not.

Not for the first time, something Rossi has done - promptly sign a new deal in this case - has shaped the media's focus. All eyes are now on three-time world champion Lorenzo, who is the biggest piece of the silly season puzzle.

Yamaha hopes Lorenzo will stay, having presented him with its "very best offer", attached to a deadline. But it knows the Spaniard is not without suitors. Suitors wearing red.

Ducati is known to to be a keen Lorenzo admirer and wants to add a big gun to its riding line-up, probably alongside Andrea Iannone. It would surely love nothing more than a fairlytale Casey Stoner return, but the Australian has ruled out racing full-time again. His focus will be on testing, and he sampled the 2016 bike for the first time on Monday.

When asked who Lorenzo might be waiting for, before signing his new deal, Jarvis admitted: "My guess is Ducati because Honda already has a top, leading rider.

"Ducati has two very competitive riders but from what I understand they are looking to take a top gun, one of the top four, in order to take their programme to another level. So I expect it's Ducati."

Why wouldn't Ducati go after Lorenzo?

Lorenzo recovered from a slow start last year to take his third title, having been the fastest rider, and took his 41st premier-class victory in Qatar last weekend. He started the season like he hadn't been off the bike since last year's Valencia finale, before you even get started on the major changes including a new control ECU and a return to Michelin tyres.

Who else is going to get more out of a Desmosedici, week in, week out, than Lorenzo?

Rossi has tried. That didn't go well and he retreated to Yamaha after two winless seasons.

Marc Marquez and Honda is a perfect marriage, so expect that deal to be renewed before too long. In Qatar with Honda still coming to grips with the new electronics, he carried it to the podium, having spent the weekend well ahead of team-mate Dani Pedrosa. Now in his 11th season with the factory Honda team, Pedrosa will need to find that "feeling" he says is lacking fairly quickly if he wants to guarantee a 12th, and would not likely be on Ducati's radar.

That's the top four in the championship for the last three years covered. Beyond that, you are looking at prospects. Admittedly Iannone, already at Ducati, is a bright one. Ditto Suzuki's Maverick Vinales.

But you can only imagine Lorenzo would hop onto the Ducati and make things happen. Ducati will know this. Whether it has actually formally sounded out Lorenzo is not completely certain, but it could do a lot worse than getting on the front foot and putting something to him. What does it have to lose?

Not that Lorenzo seems driven by finances, but the Volkswagen Audi Group subsidiary would surely be able to put an enticing offer on the table, to ensure it gets a proven race and championship winner in its stable. To, as Jarvis says, take its programme to the next level.

There does not appear to be a lot wrong with the 2016 Ducati, as we approach five-and-a-half years since the team last won a race. In reality, that probably should have changed last Sunday in Qatar.

After Iannone and Dovizioso waltzed past Lorenzo on the front straight the first time around, the race was there for the taking. As it was, they nearly came together at Turn 1 on lap six while fighting for the lead, before Iannone then fell 13 corners later. Riders can and do crash, Lorenzo included, but it's hard to think of a scenario - if the roles were reversed - in which he would not have won in Qatar on one of the red bikes.

That's not a shot at Iannone or Dovizioso, just a comment on Lorenzo. If you had to pick someone to ride and get the most out of a MotoGP bike to save your life, who would you pick? And, in the Audi/Gigi Dall'Igna era, the Ducati is no longer the untameable beast that only Stoner could master and that frustrated Rossi.

Rossi's early announcement did not appear to impress Lorenzo's camp. And over the course of the weekend, there was another little flashpoint in the Rossi and Lorenzo relationship, following an incident in the fourth practice session.

Yamaha will manage the situation to avoid that infamous wall in the garage returning, but part of Lorenzo must surely, however often he claims he wants to spend his whole career at Yamaha, think about life at something that would be "his" team. Rather than life with MotoGP's biggest ever personality and most successful rider on the other side of the garage.

"From my experience with Jorge over many years, he is always somebody that wants to try to evaluate and understand all of his possibilities before making a commitment," Jarvis said.

"He always wants to try to stand 100 per cent behind the decision that he finally makes.

"So I believe he wants to evaluate, 'OK, I clearly know what I have in Yamaha, I have good experience here, I have a good crew, I have a competitive bike'. At this important stage of his career, 'do I continue with Yamaha into the future or is now the moment to change?'

"This is an important evaluation for him to do. He wants to know everything, he wants to have it all laid out on the table, evaluate plus and minus and then decide."

Rossi stoked the fire over the weekend, suggesting Lorenzo wouldn't have the "balls" to move to Ducati. Proving him wrong, going to Ducati and winning, could prove to be Lorenzo's signature move in MotoGP. Potentially more appealing than anything printed on a cheque.

As Lorenzo starts his ninth season with Yamaha in MotoGP, he is at the peak of his powers. He turns 30 in May, so signing that new two-year deal Yamaha would take him to 32, which perhaps does add an element of 'now or never' to his decision.

He might well re-sign with Yamaha before the next round in Argentina. But let's hope he doesn't, and Ducati stakes its claim as a major player in MotoGP - as it did when it lured Stoner and Rossi - and at least gives Lorenzo something to really think about over the coming weeks and months.