MotoGP: Yamaha confident Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo will gel

Yamaha have no worries that next year’s factory MotoGP team won’t gel together with reigning world 250 champion Jorge Lorenzo set to partner Valentino Rossi in the 2008 world championship. 

Jorge Lorenzo recently signed a deal with the Japanese factory and will share a garage with Valentino Rossi, after MCN recently revealed Colin Edwards had agreed a deal to join James Toseland in the Tech 3 team next year.

There has been widespread speculation Valentino Rossi was reluctant to share a garage with Lorenzo, but Yamaha Racing boss Lin Jarvis reckons there will be no personality clash between the two.

“I can’t really comment on any of the stories and you’d need to speak to the individuals to ask them their opinion. Our team at the moment in terms of harmony and balance is probably about as good as it gets with Valentino and Colin together.

“It works very, very well but we need to also look towards younger talent.  That requires change and change is always something that a lot of people in the first sense resist a little bit. But we have to manage their situation.

“Motorsport has shown many examples before when you get two highly competitive people in the team, it requires a lot of management. If the final conclusion is Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi in the same team, we will have to manage these two specially talented riders very well.

“With Colin it’s easy for us because he’s such a super, easy, nice guy and talented rider and its sort of automatic almost. I think two Latin riders is also a little bit different than having one European.”