Valentino Rossi has revealed the final ‘risk’ he was willing to take before his MotoGP retirement

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It has already been four years since Valentino Rossi retired, and he continues to be a very busy individual away from MotoGP.

Most recently, he made an appearance at the Grand Prix of Qatar to cheer on his boys at VR46, following a very positive start to the MotoGP season.

However, it was one of the few events Rossi will be able to make this year due to his racing commitments on four wheels. He’s heavily into endurance racing.

Marc Marquez doesn’t want to emulate Rossi after retiring and admitted that swapping two wheels for four is not part of his plans in the future.

Rossi was once scared of Marquez as the two shared an exciting rivalry on and off the track through the 2010s.

It came to an end in 2021 when he retired and waved goodbye to Yamaha, feeling that the time was right to step away.

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Valentino Rossi took a ‘risk’ to race in MotoGP as long as he did

The latter part of Rossi’s premier class career wasn’t filled with much winning. In fact, his last victory came in 2017, four years before retirement.

His last title came in 2009. He was chasing success throughout the second half of his career, but just couldn’t seem to find it.

He admitted to MowMag that it was a risk to continue racing as long as he did, but it was a decision he made entirely by himself.

“I’m not the right person to answer – he joked – But they say that the right time to stop is when you’re number one. At that moment, I thought about it, but I told myself that I wanted to take a risk. Maybe I could still be number one,” said Rossi.

“I know motorcycle riders who stopped because their wives p—– them off until they stopped. I told myself, I’ll race until I can’t take it anymore and I’ll go slowly.

“Now I race cars because after having lived my whole life in racing I needed to follow up. To wake up in the morning and still be a rider, I’m happy with the choice I made because stopping from one year to the next in my opinion is tough.”

READ MORE: Alex Rins picks his MotoGP GOAT after racing against Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi

How did Valentino Rossi fare during his last MotoGP season in 2021?

Rossi spent the last year of his career riding for Petronas Yamaha SRT and struggled throughout most of the campaign.

His best result was eight, and he only made the top 10 on four separate occasions. He wound up 18th in the standings as a result.

By then, at the age of 42, he knew that his time was up and promptly decided to step away and focus on other commitments after nearly two decades at the highest level.

Looking back, he deserved and should have won the title in 2015. Missing out on five points was his own doing, as he failed to remain level-headed at the end of the campaign.

It would have made him the oldest champion of all time, but now his greatest rival is gearing up to beat the accolade with Ducati this season.