We all saw the despair on Valentino Rossi’s face yesterday at Sepang and some were speculating that the Italian would not take part in the upcoming season finale at Valencia, or that that he would actually retire from racing following his involuntary involvement in Marco Simoncelli’s tragic accident, but these rumors were played down today by friend and former Yamaha team manager Davide Brivio, who is now part of Rossi’s personal staff.
This morning Brivio, who is trying to keep everyone in the loop via Twitter wrote: “Many are asking about Vale stopping races.
This is absolutely not true and I’m sorry even that I have to explain it…”Valentino will be at Valencia, you can bet your racing boots on it, he can honour Simoncelli’s memory and love for racing only by racing.
He’ll probably don a very special helmet design by Aldo Drudi, who also designed Simoncelli’s AGV Tech helmet with the paw prints, tiger and one of Rossi’s sun symbols on the rear.
He’ll also probably wear Simoncelli’s racing number on his leathers and somewhere on his helmet for the rest of his career and the Ducati team will no doubt have #58 on both GP11’s.