Rumors about Valentino Rossi’s immediate retirement. According to El Periodico de Catalunya, the ‘Doctor’ could end his career by announcing his farewell during the MotoGP summer break. Rossi, 42, «could be the protagonist of an unthinkable surprise at the start of the championship» and «retire before the end of the World Cup, in the middle of the season. This would be disastrous for the Petronas Yamaha team and for Dorna », organizer of the World Championship,« which could not pay homage to the champion ».
Rossi, the newspaper recalls, this year only scored in 3 of the 7 Grand Prix held and is 19th in the world championship standings, very far from the leader Fabio Quartararo. To complicate the picture, according to El Periodico, the reduced contacts between Rossi and the Petronas team: “Nobody talks to the Doctor to find out what happens … They don’t talk to him not because relations have deteriorated but out of respect, almost out of fear”, he writes the magazine, stating that «it is clear, crystal clear, that the whole world thinks that Rossi will not race next season. So far, no one had foreseen the possibility that he would step down from Yamaha in the middle of the season. Now there are those who fear this hypothesis ».