2019 could be Rossi's most important year

And one abiding reason is Valentino Rossi, very much the senior rider, with the most titles, the most wins, and the most years… having just turned 40. And he too is looking very spry. For anybody, let alone a quadragenarian.

2019 will be the much-loved Italian’s 24th chance to underline his legend, and to become the most decorated rider in motorcycle history, albeit not in championships – Valentino has nine but Giacomo Agostini has 15, and the late Angel Nieto 13. 

Rossi makes light of records, but keeps a close account of them in his own mind. The greatest target, surely burnished with desire, is total race wins. Agostini retired in 1977, after 15 years of GP racing, with 122 wins, an annual average of 8.13. It helped that he was racing in two classes each weekend, 350 and 500, but there were far fewer races; just ten in his final title year to 19 this year.

Rossi has amassed 115 wins, leaving him seven short of equalling Ago, with one more needed to take the all-time record. Can he do it in the two years remaining on his current contract? On average, yes, as his stands at five wins each year. But averages are a cruel measure towards the end of any sportsman’s career. Rossi’s was badly dented last year, his first without a win – not counting two fallow years with Ducati – since 1997.

The 19-race season runs from 10^th March under floodlights at Qatar until the autumn chill of Valencia on 17^th November, and visits 16 countries (Spain thrice, Italy twice), and both hemispheres. At each track, from Assen in the north to Phillip Island in the south, from Argentina in the west to Japan in the east, a phalanx of 21 other riders, including seven other race winners, are determined to keep it that way.

His fiercest competitors were barely out of nappies when Valentino took his first win in 1997. Marc Marquez was three, Maverick Vinales just over one.

Pre-season tests have been interesting, although it is never wise to read too much into them. Let’s accept that they are at least suggestive, a view that Rossi’s factory Yamaha team-mate Vinales would like to endorse. He was fast at both pre-season venues, Sepang and Losail (where he dominated), but more importantly he was racking up consistently fast long runs and race simulations. 

He made it look as though Yamaha had at last turned the corner after two fallow seasons, and even as his own often gloomy prognostications became more positive, rank rookie satellite Yamaha rider Fabio Quartararo (just 19) underlined the improvement by placing second fastest overall. And Rossi, on the same bike? He took until the last day to ease himself into touch with fifth-fastest time.

Over at Honda, the formidable combination of Marquez and new team-mate Jorge Lorenzo were both late to the party, thanks to injury and off-season surgery. All the same, Marquez was back close to full strength, and riding with his usual cavalier approach to finding the limit (by exceeding it, and falling off), fourth fastest at Losail; while Lorenzo (nursing fresh surgery to a broken wrist in his first outing of the year) ran a second faster every day to place sixth, just two thousandths slower than Rossi. 

Ducati marked the pre-season with the usual rash of more or less puzzling add-on innovations, including a parallel drag link for the rear brake, an enigmatic cable control on the front fork (an anti-wheelie device to keep the suspension compressed in the run to the first corner?), a six-wing fairing, and an air-scoop (tyre cooling?) under the rear swinging arm. Steady rider Andrea Dovizioso, title runner up for the past two years, was industrious and reliably close to the top, new team-mate Danilo Petrucci threateningly quicker.

And while Aprilia and KTM still have ground to make up, former poor relation Suzuki had young Spanish talent Alex Rins right up to speed in both single laps and long runs at both tests, the blue bike’s sweet handling making up for a relative lack of top speed, compared with the brutishly fast Ducatis and the new power-up Hondas.

Where does this leave everybody’s favourite MotoGP rider? Same as ever: in a position never to be ruled out.

Rossi is a Sunday man, meaning that his combination of determination and race-craft reliably improve on testing, practice and qualifying performance when it really matters. He’ll find it hard to add more wins, but that’s never stopped him before.

Photography by Motorsport Images.