06/27/2025
When Valentino Rossi almost joined Suzuki
Valentino Rossi never competed for Suzuki, but indeed this almost happened in 2013. When Suzuki worked on their MotoGP comeback.
At the end of the year 2013, Valentino Rossi left Ducati and re-joined Yamaha. But if things would have gone a bit differently, The Doctor would have joined Suzuki. Atleast according to former Suzuki team boss, Davide Brivio.
As Brivio recalls while talking to the Slick Magazine.
"We have to start from 2011, when I worked for Valentino. I also left Yamaha at the end of 2010, like him. At the end of 2011 Suzuki [left MotoGP], but in the paddock it was known that they wanted to stop already at the end of 2010, so in 2011 they raced โ fielding only one bike โ just to honour the contract with Dorna. On the official statement announcing the withdrawal it was written โwe will returnโ so in the paddock it was known that the story would not end there. But certainly I, at that time, did not think that soon I would have to deal with Suzuki.
At the beginning of 2012, [Suzuki MotoGP boss] Shinichi Sahara contacted me. He said.
'We really want to come back, and we will do it in 2014, so I would like to know if Valentino is interested in joining the project'.
I told Valentino about it โ knowing that the contract with Ducati was valid until the end of the 2012 championship โ and he told me he needed a bike for 2013, not for 2014. So he couldn't wait for Suzuki. And that's exactly what I told Shinichi Sahara:
โThank you for your interest, but we can't do anything,โ I explained.
He took notice, and for a while we didn't hear from each other. But after some time, Sahara contacted me again. And this time he said to me:
โIf we kept Italy as a base for the new Suzuki Team, would you be interested in managing it?โ
When Sahara had contacted me for Valentino, he had also told me that they would be willing to make the team headquarters in Italy, to keep it close to him. So the idea of making a base in Italy was already there. Anyway, this time I replied:
โYes, I'm interested.โ
It was the summer of 2012, and at the beginning of autumn I went to Japan to start talking about the new project."
While Brivio joined Suzuki in 2013 and stayed with Suzuki till 2021, Rossi himself never joined Suzuki and instead competed for Yamaha for nine more years before retiring at the end of 2021 on the Yamaha.
