LESS THAN 24 hours after Valentino Rossi announced he will switch to Ducati MotoGP from 2011, Rossi's current team, Fiat Yamaha, has already started edging out the Italian from the squad's plans for next year.
Rossi was banned from trying out the team's 2011 Ohlins forks during post race testing at Brno on Monday this week - a move that's upset Rossi, as the Italian still wants to give "110%" for the rest of the season.
Speaking to respected MotoGP paddock insider David Emmett about whether he'd been given the chance to test the new set-up, Rossi said:
"No, I didn't try the fork, because Yamaha don't give them to me to try. So, yeah, yesterday I was very upset for this, because we have eight races to go, not two or three, and I want to make, like always, 110% of my effort for the second part of the season with Yamaha - for the last races for me with the M1. And I expect also the same effort from Yamaha. They say to me that they don't use this fork in the next races, so it is a fork for 2011. This is easy to understand, because the fork from the outside is different, so we will understand if this is the truth or it is a lie."
With Yamaha now firmly backing golden child Lorenzo for the team's future in MotoGP, with Ben Spies waiting in the wings to snap up Rossi's seat, it seems the love affair between the Italian and Yamaha is well and truly over.
