Yamaha accelerated Rossi’s contract decision

Despite Rossi saying that he would wait “five or six races to decide” about a two-year contract extension with Yamaha beyond 2016, the timing was changed by team-mate Jorge Lorenzo’s goal of having a new deal secured before the first race. Rossi signed in Doha. Rossi:

I thought in my mind to wait some races, I want to see if I am competitive. Also because usually it is like this, you decide around June. I spoke with Yamaha after the test and they said to me that they are very happy if I continue. In my mind I wanted to continue. The contract more or less was already ready. They said to me, ‘why wait?’ and I said, ‘I agree’, so we did it.

Yamaha’s Jarvis:

I think his expectation and our expectation is most likely this will be the last contract in MotoGP, I guess. But never say never, as we have learned from his career up until today.