Valentino Rossi once called on three-time world champion Luca Cadalora for help as he tried to add to his seven MotoGP riders’ titles whilst at Yamaha during the 2010s.
Rossi is one of the most successful riders in premier class history, but the Italian achieved all of his title triumphs during the 2000s. So, after Rossi lost out to his Yamaha teammate Jorge Lorenzo for the 2015 MotoGP title by five points, he asked Cadalora to act as his rider coach.
Lorenzo beat Rossi to win the title in 2015, which enraged the latter as he felt Marc Marquez tried to help his fellow Spaniard. It would also mark the penultimate time that Rossi bid for a crown, as his last title fight would then follow in 2016 when he lost to Marquez by 49 points.
Rossi contacted Cadalora during the winter of 2015 to discuss his fellow Italian becoming his coach. The partnership continued through the 2018 MotoGP season, which returned Rossi’s first winless season since he re-joined Yamaha in 2013. Rossi never won another Grand Prix.
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Luca Cadalora never found it ‘easy’ to tell Valentino Rossi where he had to improve
Cadalora forged his own successful motorcycle racing career between 1984 and 2000. The native of Modena, Italy started in the 125cc class and won the title in 1986. Cadalora moved up to the 250cc class in 1987, and he also won the intermediate class title in 1991 and 1992.
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Rossi saw the benefits of hiring Cadalora as his rider coach in his ultimately unsuccessful bid for a first MotoGP title since 2009. Yet Cadalora now admits that he never found it “easy” to tell Rossi where he needed to improve after accompanying him at each race for three years.
Cadalora told Moto.it: “No, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy at all. But on some tracks there are difficulties that you sometimes have to remind the riders, because riders sometimes tend to forget certain things. They tend to erase them.
“For example, at Phillip Island, there is a corner that you take after the right-hand descent. It has characteristics that create particular difficulties, and maybe reminding them that you have to do a certain thing to get the best out of it is something you can remind them of.”
Luca Cadalora could not stop Valentino Rossi’s MotoGP career from regressing
Rossi won the first of his seven premier class titles racing with Nastro Azzurro Honda in 2001 during the final 500cc class season. The Urbino native also got his second premier class title in 2002 after he joined the factory Honda team during the first campaign of the MotoGP era.
Another title with Honda followed in 2003, before Rossi moved to Yamaha in 2004 and won another championship. Further titles followed with Yamaha in 2005, 2008 and 2009, but he would only finish second at best in 2014, 2015 and 2016 before, eventually, retiring in 2021.
Cadalora’s time as Rossi’s rider coach helped him get two Grand Prix wins in 2016 and one in 2017. But Rossi’s runs to the rostrum reduced each year with 10 in 2016, six in 2017 and five in 2018. Rossi suggested at the time that Cadalora decided to step down at the end of 2018.
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