No Rossi and Crutchlow dream team at Suzuka

A Yamaha dream team featuring Valentino Rossi and Cal Crutchlow racing a factory R1 superbike in the prestigious Suzuka 8-hour endurance race is just a dream for 2013.

Rossi and Crutchlow spoke briefly earlier this year about competing in the gruelling event on July 28, which the Italian won way back in 2001 with American Colin Edwards when both rode for Honda.

But Yamaha said it was too late to run such a high profile effort, though boss Lin Jarvis hasn’t ruled out a Rossi and Crutchlow dream team in 2014, assuming that the British rider commits his future to the Japanese factory in MotoGP.

Jarvis told MCN: “We are much too late to do anything for this year even if we wanted to. The idea of them thinking about it is very interesting and exciting and for the Japanese market it would be fabulous. I have a feeling that this year will be fairly low profile from Yamaha but maybe in 2014 and 2015 there can be more engagement from our side and the concept of using big names is very attractive.”