Team effort fundamental to Valentino Rossi’s title success

Yamaha Racing Managing Director Lin Jarvis praised the huge team effort involved in Valentino Rossi winning his first MotoGP title since 2005 at the Twin Ring Motegi yesterday.

Rossi’s victory gave him an eighth world title but it also handed Yamaha the all-important team and constructor world championships in the process on a brilliant home race for the Japanese factory.

And Jarvis said: “It is fantastic for us to win the Triple Crown in Japan at the home of Yamaha. In our project with Valentino we have now got three victories in the five years we have been together and we have him to stay with us for another two years.

Really it is a team effort. We won the team and constructor prize because of all the effort that all the people behind the scenes put in. You need a great rider, and we have the best.

“You need a great team and Davide (Brivio) and his crew are the best, and you need great engineers and (Masao) Furusawa and the whole group at Yamaha have done a great job on this project.”

Jarvis said he was now looking forward to plotting more success ahead for Yamaha, particularly with the Fiat Yamaha team posing formidable opposition in 2009 with the impressive Jorge Lorenzo and Rossi.

He added: “Next year again we have the best rider in the world with us and also we have in my opinion the best rookie (Jorge Lorenzo) for the future. So our aim is to continue and hopefully give Valentino his ninth and tenth world titles while he is with us. We aim to keep going at the top and we aim to keep working hard to do that.”