Yamaha cannot afford to wait on Rossi's future

Even though Valentino Rossi's winless streak has now passed the two-year mark, few would dare to claim that he is no longer one of MotoGP's most bankable assets.

At the age of 40, Rossi remains grand prix racing's best-known, most popular and most marketable star - and while Marc Marquez has already broken many of his records and is creeping up on some of his bigger milestones, he does not yet command the attention 'the Doctor' receives.

Yet it's an equally inescapable fact that MotoGP is cruising towards its post-Rossi era. Right now he is comfortably the oldest full-timer on the grid, and next year Rossi is poised to become the first 41-year old to contest a complete schedule in the championship's modern era. Perhaps when he does eventually leave, the impact of Rossi's exit from the grid will turn out to have been overstated - but it's certain promoters aren't exactly delighted at the prospect.

It's long been clear that both Dorna and Rossi's current employer Yamaha are more or less reserving a place on the MotoGP grid for his VR46 team to ensure he stays in the paddock after he's done riding. Likewise GP organisers - even those outside his home country - are clearly anticipating certain consequences: Silverstone managing director Stuart Pringle describes life post-Rossi as "more of a concern" in terms of gate receipts than the potential lack of a British premier-class rider.

Yet for Yamaha, should Rossi decide to call time on his MotoGP career at the expiry of his current contract, it could prove a double-edged sword. Rossi's departure as a rider would come with clear downsides in terms of marketing and PR, but on the sporting side, based on the 2019 season so far, Yamaha's ideal 2021 line-up probably would not have a place for Valentino Rossi.

After Rossi's triple punch of retirements at Mugello, Barcelona and Assen, grand prix racing legend Giacomo Agostini was quoted as saying that Rossi can no longer "keep up" with his rivals. "We all want him to be there again, to always be number one, but I think it's clear to everyone that the opponents are much stronger," Agostini said.

If this was prompted by the run of retirements, it's a bit on the harsh side, since race crashes in MotoGP often come in streaks for a rider - just ask Alex Rins, who'd only just chucked it down the road at Assen and Sachsenring, or Andrea Dovizioso, whose 2018 challenge unravelled during an early season rough patch.

It hasn't been entirely down to Rossi, either - he might have finished on the podium at Barcelona had he negotiated the tangle caused by Jorge Lorenzo at Turn 10. But even if it's still open to debate whether Rossi has the pace to match his closest opposition (after all, he was the highest-placed Yamaha rider in the standings just one race ago), something that is increasingly clear is that he's falling further and further behind on single-lap pace.

Yamaha MotoGP riders' average grid position

Rossi has never really been the king of qualifying, and that hasn't stopped him from doing very well. But because most riders in MotoGP are now capable of pulling out a strong single lap, there are more and more competitors who can slot themselves into the gap between pole and Rossi, deny him automatic progression from FP3 and then leave him stranded in Q1.

Even if he then has better long-run pace in the race, getting through all the traffic is a hassle and seems to be getting more complicated. At Mugello he tagged the rear of Joan Mir and crashed out when trying to make his way forward after starting in 18th. At Assen he felt quick in the race and was desperate to make up for earlier struggles, but wiped out Takaaki Nakagami when attempting an overtake. At the Sachsenring, he made little progress from 11th on the grid.

Rossi's recent slump has coincided with the meteoric rise of Fabio Quartararo, who has obliterated all expectations in his rookie MotoGP season already. The 20-year-old Frenchman represented a huge gamble for the new privateer Yamaha team when he was selected for a premier-class promotion last year.

His relative lack of success in the lower grand prix classes marked him as the odd man out among his fellow MotoGP rookies Francesco Bagnaia (Moto2 champion), Miguel Oliveira (Moto2 runner-up) and Mir (Moto3 champion), yet he has outshone all three in the premier class so far, to the point where it's now difficult to imagine that Petronas could have ended up with its priority targets Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa, or subsequent alternative Alvaro Bautista, instead.

The likelihood is that Quartararo will have factory ride offers on the table early next year

Despite running a bike that is supposed to be a little bit down on power, Quartararo has more than had the measure of his highly rated and more experienced team-mate Franco Morbidelli, who himself had been tipped to be the breakout star of the season.

Quartararo has been stealing his thunder since Qatar, and between FP1 at Barcelona and FP4 at the Sachsenring three weeks later the rookie put together a scarcely believable streak of finishing within the top three in every session, be it practice, qualifying or race.

Quartararo is still prone to the occasional rookie error at key moments, and starts have been a problem, but otherwise he has made it very easy for those keeping an eye on him to get carried away. The media won't be alone in that - just like Johann Zarco became the hot property of the 2019 rider market by impressing on the Tech3-run satellite Yamaha, Quartararo looks set to be in that same position for 2021.

The likelihood is that Quartararo will have factory ride offers on the table early next year, but you'd also imagine that having gelled so well with the YZR-M1 bike and having had such a tumultuous junior career, he would be quite open to remaining in the Yamaha fold.

A promotion for Quartararo would leave one of Rossi and Maverick Vinales facing the axe, and their battle has been too close to make this an easy call. Since joining Yamaha Vinales has picked up 508 points to Rossi's 486, meaning they're less than a race win apart after some 45 races, one of which Rossi had skipped.

Vinales has not exactly proved the tailor-made replacement to Jorge Lorenzo that his two initial wins in Qatar and Argentina suggested. Ever since the M1 lost its edge over the competition, Vinales has struggled to consistently deliver to the bike's level, and his form has oscillated wildly - far more so than Rossi's or that of the satellite bikes.

Last year he would drop like a stone from promising positions during race starts, and fell out spectacularly with top crew chief Ramon Forcada, to the point where Yamaha had to order him to stop talking to the media about it. In the end, Yamaha has had to bring in Esteban Garcia to work with Vinales, with Forcada shifted to Franco Morbidelli's Petronas Yamaha garage.

Amid all that, it's also impossible to ignore that Vinales has taken five wins to Rossi's one in their time as team-mates, as well as seven pole positions to Rossi's one. And on current form he certainly seems more likely to add to these tallies than Rossi, as Vinales is both seemingly a lot happier with Garcia by his side and has recently overcome - for now - the bad-start malaise that hampered him in 2018.

On current form, Vinales and Quartararo are not only the two fastest Yamaha riders but two of the four or five fastest riders on the grid. Marquez named the two as his biggest threats for the rest of the season, and while you could dismiss that as mind games against Ducati or Rossi, Marquez doesn't have a track record of making unsubstantiated claims.

There's a possibility that letting Rossi retire on his terms would seriously compromise Yamaha's chances of hanging on to two potential superstars

Rossi, of course, could still absolutely haul himself back onto the level of his fellow Yamaha standouts, or even surpass them.

He's been written off before in these past few years and has always returned to a good level. But as long as neither Quartararo nor Vinales goes completely off the rails, this shouldn't matter.

Vinales is 24 years old, Quartararo is 20. Both have already proved they're talents of the highest tier and if Yamaha commits to the pair, there's a good chance it won't have to worry about its rider line-up for years to come. And it's easy to imagine either becoming world champion with a different manufacturer should they be released by Yamaha.

Rossi is a top rider, but his time in MotoGP is nearly up, and Yamaha is as aware of that as anyone. "With all due respect he is no longer the future of our participation in MotoGP," Lin Jarvis acknowledged to Autosport. "He could still be here for another year, two years or three years - we will have to see how long he stays competitive. But it is a different relationship now, a different sort of dependence on him."

Jarvis, however, also stresses that it will be "both parties' decision" as to when Rossi vacates his Yamaha ride, and that "the first signs" will come from Rossi's side. But if Rossi indicates he would like to continue past his current deal, then Yamaha will have to make a decision, whether it likes it or not.

Could it arrange him a ride with Petronas, or agree to a deal in which Rossi competes for his VR46 team? Or could it give Rossi a one-year extension, while trying to convince Quartararo that he's better off waiting for one more year with a satellite Yamaha?

Those solutions make intuitive sense, but only if Quartararo and Rossi are not dead set on being part of a factory team in 2021 - which is a massive 'if'. Otherwise, the situation becomes very complicated.

And while these are all hypotheticals about a seemingly distant season, the fact Vinales signed his 2019-20 deal in January of '18 suggests Yamaha will need a plan of action for the next two-year cycle sooner rather than later.

No doubt Yamaha would want to avoid doing anything to sour its relations with Rossi. Besides being a very capable rider in his own right, he's a massive asset when it comes to prestige, marketing and, ultimately, selling bikes.

But there's a possibility that letting the MotoGP legend retire on his terms would seriously compromise Yamaha's chances of hanging on to two potential superstars - and if Yamaha is serious about future MotoGP success, it already has to prioritise re-signing Vinales and Quartararo over keeping Rossi happy.