MotoGP rider Valentino Rossi will retire at the end of the 2021 season after 14 years with Yamaha in world championship racing.
Founder and current vice president of the official VR46 fan club, Flavio Fratesi, has reavealed, the official VR46 fan club will continue to organize the activities despite the fact that the Rossi will no longer be there for next season.
The official VR46 fan club currently has 15,000 members from 88 countries. It is striking that many of them only joined the club in recent years, when Rossi had already passed his sporting peak.
“We will continue. We keep getting emails asking us not to stop. There are good reasons to keep going. Vale continues to race in motorsport, he has a team in MotoGP and then there are all the riders from his VR46 academy.
“In 2008 we only had 6,000 members, now we have 15,000. Fan clubs usually shrink when performance drops. But the opposite is true for us in this case.” Fratesi added.
Leaving MotoGP is a decision which Rossi had been pondering on for a long time and was very hard to make, because it is the sport he loves.
“I said I would take a decision for next year after the summer break, and I decided to stop at the end of the season.
“Unfortunately this will be my last half season as a MotoGP rider. And it’s difficult, it’s a very sad moment because it’s difficult to say it and know that next year I will not race with a motorcycle, I’ve done that for I think more or less 30 years!
“Next year, my life will change. But it was great, I’ve enjoyed it very much, it’s been a long, long journey and it was really, really fun.” Rossi added
