MotoGP, Rossi and the Razali “curse”: “You won’t win again”

Razlan Razali and Valentino Rossi had the chance to work together during the 2021 season, the Doctor’s last season in MotoGP, when the Malaysian was head of the Yamaha Petronas SRT team now sponsored by WithU.

Razali and Rossi’s first meeting

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A partnership that started positively but ended badly, so much so that the Italian was convinced to hang up his helmet once and for all. But the Malaysian and the Italian didn’t in fact meet for the first time in 2021, but rather way back in 2005.

Razali himself admits this in the MotoGP Unlimited docuseries currently available on the Prime Video platform. The manager recalls his first (less than idyllic) meeting with Valentino, during that year’s winter tests.

The Valentino ‘curse’

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The relationship between Razali and Rossi has never been great, with Razali admitting on more than one occasion that he regretted hiring #46 in 2021. During the Amazon series, the team manager talks more about this discord: “I was a huge Valentino fan and very excited when Rossi came to the winter tests at Sepang for the first time in 2005”, remembers Razali. “I asked if he’d sign my book and he walked by without saying a word, he didn’t think twice. In that moment, I thought ‘you come to my country and do that to me? You’ll never win another championship”.

Something of a 'curse', which didn’t stop Valentino from winning two more titles in 2008-2009 before giving way to a 12-year drought.

“I lost interest in him after that, until there was a chance to have him as a rider. That’s life, that’s karma. I never told him, I’m admitting it here for the first time”, concludes an honest Razali.

Translated by Heather Watson

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