After his bold statements to the BBC about Yamaha being forced to choose between he and teammate Jorge Lorenzo for 2011 and a possible ride with Ducati, Valentino Rossi is now backpedaling as quickly as possible from those statements.

Rossi took a shotgun approach to the story, telling the MotoGP press that the statements were taken out of context, hypothetical and that he has no control over what Yamaha does, anyway. He said that he has never spoken to anyone at Ducati about riding there and just mentioned Ducati as possible suitor in sort of a 'thinking out loud' fashion.

After Rossi left Honda for Yamaha, he wrote an extensive and entertaining account in his autobiography of the behind the scenes theater that actually went on between he, Yamaha and Honda, culminating with the Italian rider and Yamaha Team Manager Davide Brivio hiding under a table in the middle of the night as they conspired to get him on Yamaha's MotoGP team. Rossi is rumored to be working on a sequel to that book.