Valentino Rossi expects more Yamaha dominance

Valentino Rossi expects Yamaha to continue dominating the MotoGP world championship after a hugely successful 2009 campaign.

The 30-year-old Italian, who has won six races on board the Fiat Yamaha YZR-M1 this season, reckons it has taken Yamaha over two years to reach its current level.

And he reckons it could take that long for rivals like Honda to play catch-up.

Rossi has heaped praise on Yamaha engineer’s after the Japanese factory suffered a resounding defeat to Ducati in the first 800cc season in 2007.

During 2007, Rossi continually remarked on the poor performance of his YZR-M1, but the in-line four-cylinder bike has been transformed.

Yamaha’s YZR-M1 has won 19 of the last 31 premier class races with Rossi and Spanish team-mate Jorge Lorenzo and Rossi told MCN: “In our case, to arrive at this level of performance with the M1 has taken two years. We started to work halfway through 2007, so it is nearly two years and I expect us to continue in this way.

“But it has been that long when we made all the right decisions to improve. We didn’t take a wrong step so we have saved time because of that. Honda has to work and they always bring a lot of things, but it is up to Dani (Pedrosa) and Andrea (Dovizioso) to understand if what they are doing is the right way. If you understand the right way then you don’t lose any time. If not then you need a lot of time.”