With our behind the scenes MotoGP experience talk was that Fiat would no longer sponsor Yamaha Racing if Valentino Rossi were to move to Ducati. We already mentioned what that indicates about their sponsorship agreement and aspirations - that Fiat was sponsoring a rider, not a team. While it’s a good fit in some ways that an Italian car manufacturer should sponsor an Italian sports star, it’s interesting to see that it’s all over for Fiat despite sponsoring what is still a winning team with Jorge Lorenzo at the helm.

There was talk that Fiat would like to follow Rossi wherever he goes, but we could never see them muscling in on Marlboro’s act. So now that Rossi is possibly off to Ducati (with an announcement likely to be made at Brno), that would see Fiat’s departure from the Yamaha team. While Fiat could form part of the near all-Italian sponsorship network at Ducati, it’s unlikely that it would ever be main sponsor, in the near future anyway. It just shows us Rossi’s marketing pull is infinite.

According to rumours, Yamaha Racing managing director Lin Jarvis has had meetings with Spanish telecommunications company, Telefonica, over a possible sponsorship agreement. Telefonica previously left the MotoGP sponsorship team back in 2005 after sponsoring Team Honda Gresini (Sete Gibernau in the photo above). If it’s true that Telefonica will be Yamaha’s sponsor we could see the racing team go from being Little Italy to Little Spain.

Source | AS.com via Motoblog

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